World's Edge
by Antigone4
Summary: Spoilers through Grave. Spike and his soul are trying hard to stay away from the Hellmouth and its resident Slayer until Giles finds a prophecy foretelling the end of the world. Spuffy at heart, but this is definitely an ensemble piece.
1.

World's Edge  
  
Part One: The Host  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
The burns were healing nicely. Spike sat in the shadows for days, growing glassy eyed and hungry, feeling his body knit itself back together. It was better to feel the bones grind and pop themselves into place than think about what he had done. The chip was in his head, the demon was in his bones, and the soul sat like pewter in his gut, heavy and dull.  
  
Something scuffled in the sand to his left, the toe of a sneaker against the dirty cave floor. Spike shifted his eyes towards the sound.  
  
"You're all sparkly," Tara said with a shy smile.  
  
His mind, exhausted, did not question her presence. Tara in Africa, why not? Perhaps Buffy and her sundry sharp wooden objects were just around the corner. Sniffed him out looking for revenge. Xander Harris with his big axe at the ready.  
  
"Glad you approve," Spike frowned. He supposed she meant the sodding soul.  
  
Personally he was starting to think he had been better off without it. Cold as the moon, the soul shone a hard, pale light through his thoughts, harshly illuminating all his missteps and misconceptions. Before the plan had been clear: get the soul and then scurry back to Sunnydale. What would he have told the Slayer? Hello, doll, just thought I'd pop by and show you my shiny new soul. Had he really thought that? All better. No more evil. Start again. The simplicity was beautiful.  
  
"I'm an idiot," he said with despair. Spike looked out into the sun that trapped him in the lurky demon's cave. One step into the daylight and he could end the whole stupid thing now. He rolled his head against the gritty cave wall towards Tara.  
  
"I - I think you made the right choice," she nodded, hiding behind her hair.  
  
Why did she bob her head like that, Spike wondered. It annoyed the fuck out of him. He should have wished the chip out. At least then he could have fed on her. He was hungry, and it would be nice to have something fresh and warm for a change. His stomach twisted. No, not on her, because she was kind, and she spoke more sense than the rest of that lot. How had they managed to survive for so long?  
  
"Do you now?" asked Spike. "What do you know about my choices?"  
  
Did she know about the bathroom? Had Buffy told everyone? He felt sick. Unsteadily he stood up and walked toward the witch, his hand against the wall to stabilize himself. Something was wrong.  
  
"So...umn. are you Spike still, or William?" Tara shifted from foot to foot nervously.  
  
"Still Spike. Just with a new type of headache, love." Bloody hell, she wasn't breathing. And she wasn't warm. He tilted his head with something approaching kindness. "What happened to you then?"  
  
Tara smiled. Stupid girl smiled at everything. She smiled and lifted her curtain of hair and showed him her chest. Around the bullet hole the blood was glistening, but didn't smell like anything. It was an illusion, a way for her to tell the story without using any words.  
  
Tara was disappointed by his reaction. Spike didn't look at all surprised, simply more dead than usual. Bits of light and bits of shadow standing in front of her looking bored and tired and, if she squinted, sparkly and clean in a way she would never have been able to see when she was alive. How like him to make such a futile romantic gesture. Better, Tara thought, than trying to destroy the world because you lost your lover, but still pretty pointless. He would begin to realize that soon enough, and she wanted to talk to him before the full implications settled in. What would he do when he realized he could never have Buffy now? Fall on a stake? That would typical of him.  
  
"I'm sorry," Spike said, and to his surprise he was. Didn't take him too long to become a soft fuck, did it? "But I have enough dead people to haunt me, thanks all the same."  
  
"I want you to do something for me," Tara said. "Please," she added, remembering her manners.  
  
Spike shook his head. He didn't even want to hear the offer. Ghosts. Why can't some people just leave the living world alone? Then he laughed sharply. Tara stood patiently by.  
  
"What's in it for me?" he asked finally, because with all the restrictions put on him by the demon, the chip and the soul, none of them prevented him from being selfish.  
  
"I'll give you a present," Tara offered as though she was trying to bribe a child.  
  
Spike paused, looking out into the sunlight, weighing his options. "I'm not going back to Sunnydale." He gave the caveat with something that resembled fear.  
  
"No," Tara agreed. "You're not. Now hold still; this will hurt."  
  
She reached out her cold hand to his chest and Spike screamed again. He wondered if this was what penitence was like.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
London had not changed much since the last time he had been there. It was still dark and sooty. The road was slick from the polluted rain falling from the familiar dusky sky. No direct sunlight this evening. No more horseshit in the street either, sticking to his boots, or catching in his cloak, which was defiantly an improvement. Spike paused before a red Georgian door with no handle. He could just break through the deadbolt, but that wouldn't get him far so he knocked three times, politely. Carefully Spike listened to the sound of papers being shuffled aside, footsteps moving towards the entrance. There was a pause while his prey stood behind the door, peering through the peak-hole. No surprises then. Even so the door still opened.  
  
"Hello, Watcher. Aren't you going to invite me in?" Spike asked with a sharp, cold grin.  
  
Giles loomed in the doorway, hard, and weary, and unimpressed by this bit of bravado. Spike surmised the Watcher had spoken to Buffy and expected him to reach for a stake like a good father figure. He also felt an unexpected rush of compassion for Giles who longed to protect Buffy and all the Scoobies and was hopelessly under qualified. Nobody could protect Buffy better than she could protect herself. Spike stomped the feeling down someplace low and out of the way. Was this what the soul was going to do? Annoy his un-life with sorrow for the dead and pity for poncy Watchers? He had expected something more dramatic and.interesting.  
  
"The chip's still in," he said, pointing two fingers at his forehead in what he hoped was a reassuring manner.  
  
Standing in the door, Giles ran both hands through his graying hair and said nothing. Words, words to deal with Spike, didn't come to his mouth fast enough. There weren't enough words in the world.  
  
Mentally he enumerated why he didn't have time for this. One, he had research to do regarding a rather annoying prophecy that would, with his luck, foretell of imminent danger and possibly death. Two, something would have to be done with Willow soon. The Devon Coven had almost finished preparing for the binding ritual, but she was giving them a most frightful time in the meanwhile. Three, there was an Edicitnafni demon eating children in Clapham, and he doubted anybody else was going to deal with it. All things considered, he really did not have time for Spike now. Or ever. But why would Spike be here at all? Loathing his own curiosity, Giles sighed and stepped aside.  
  
"Very well. You may come in, Spike," Giles said, ushering the vampire through the door. "Although I don't guarantee I will allow you to leave."  
  
"Yeah? Well, fair enough."  
  
As Spike entered the living room his nose filled with the scent of dust, paper, and cracked leather bindings: the smells he had come to associate with Giles over the years. With a twinge of self-preservation, his eyes roamed the room searching for anything sharp and wooden. All he found was a tiny room crammed with ancient volumes shelved and stacked in no discernable order, a couch, two wing backed chairs, a table obscured by reams of paper, and a teapot covered in a tea-cozy. Of course Giles owned a tea-cozy. The man gave Brits the world over a bad name.  
  
They sat down in the chairs by the fireplace like two gentleman preparing for a long, civil discussion about cigars or horse racing. Having removed the tea-cozy, Giles poured himself a fresh cup. Pointedly, he did not offer any to the vampire.  
  
"Suppose you tell me why you've come?" he said, his tone clipped and impatient.  
  
Spike slouched low in his chair, nervous fingers picking at the upholstery, and tried to compose a sentence. I saw a ghost, Spike thought, and she told me to come to London. Love beyond the grave, blah, blah, blah. He didn't even know where to start.  
  
"Is Buffy all right?" Spike asked suddenly, looking stricken. Giles supposed it would have been a display of heartbreaking concern had it not come from her attempted rapist.  
  
"If you've come here sniffing for information on Buffy," the Watcher began, rising angrily from his chair. Hints of old Ripper, Spike supposed.  
  
"No! I want to be useful. Make amends. Fix," Spike waved his hands about vaguely, "things.. Work for the higher good and all that rot."  
  
Sitting back down, Giles rubbed his eyes, suddenly old again, myopic, and tired. "Really, Spike, can't you come up with something more plausible? You've always managed to. insinuate yourself where you aren't wanted, but you can hardly expect us to tolerate your presence now."  
  
"Look!" Spike said hotly, and then pulled himself up short, rubbing his hands together to keep from ripping up the furniture. He was going to have to tell the truth. He hated telling the truth. Former Big Bad reveals all. Spike shuddered. "Look, let me tell you a story. I'll keep it short, and then you can decide what to do with me, all right? I'm throwing myself - well not on your mercy, obviously - but on your better judgment.  
  
"When I left Sunnydale I went to Africa. There are demons," he licked his lips, wishing for some tea, or blood. He was ridiculously hungry. "There are demons that will grant any wish for a price, or a test."  
  
"The chip," Giles gasped. In his hand, the teacup rattled frenetically on its saucer and threatened to spill.  
  
Good, Spike thought; he could still scare people. That was worth something.  
  
"No, the sodding chip is still there. I'm not telling this very well," Spike said, his hands creeping back to the arms of his chair like destructive, pale spiders. Communication had never been his thing. Who, after all, used the word effulgent? Bloody, poncy Victorian prats, that was who.  
  
"Begin at the beginning," Giles advised, setting the traitorous teacup down on the table.  
  
The beginning, Spike thought as he worried at a loose thread in the fabric, pulled hard enough to make a small hole. What was the beginning?  
  
"I broke my word," Spike said thoughtfully, coving the rip he had made with the tip of his finger. "I told Buffy that I didn't do things that hurt her. And the thing is, I thought I was telling the truth. I didn't go there that night to attack her or try to. rape her. I wanted to talk. That was it."  
  
"I really don't care about your intentions. Tell me what happened in Africa." Giles said, his voice hard to cover his outrage at the self- pitying vampire, his outrage at himself for having invited the monster in, for leaving Buffy to deal with the cruelties of the world on her own. Could any of this have happened if he'd remained in Sunnydale? Of course it could. The whole debacle with Angel proved that well enough. Giles loathed his ineffectualness as passionately as he hated the demon that was shredding the fabric of his favorite chair.  
  
He glared at Spike, almost doubled over across the table from him, looking ashamed. But of course he couldn't be. Spike could act human at times, but that was all it was: a pantomime for their benefit. Giles was unimpressed.  
  
"I spent so much time convincing her I wasn't a monster I think I convinced myself," Spike said to the teapot. He couldn't look at the Watcher any longer. "But I am a monster, an animal who harms the people he loves. That's not what I want, to be ruled by a demon. Don't get met wrong, it was fun. For a while it was a lot of fun, but I want control over my own actions. I want to know if it was me or the demon that could hurt her like that."  
  
"Spike, you are the demon. Unless you wished for your humanity, in which case you would not have needed me to invite you in." Giles pondered, his mind scurrying off, as always, down myriad murky paths of possibility.  
  
Oh to hell with the bloody convoluted explanations, Spike decided. "My soul. I survived the trials and the demon restored my soul," he said, still addressing the apathetic teapot.  
  
"Oh. Oh I see. H-have you, ah, told Buffy?" Giles stammered, his busy mind suddenly, unexpectedly silent. He removed his spectacles and began massaging them with a white cloth to give his thoughts a chance to coalesce in the void.  
  
Spike looked up then, evidently surprised by the question. "No. And I'm not going to. The best thing I can do is stay far away from Sunnydale. Try to be useful somewhere else. Back to that atonement thing."  
  
"Yes," Giles said softly. "Yes I see. I don't know if I can instruct you in the art of remorse."  
  
Spike shook his head. "I think I have the guilt complex down," he said with his familiar, cruel smile. "I just want to do something useful. Something good, far away from.where I was. I'll understand if you say no."  
  
Giles took a sip of his tea, which had grown cold while he and the vampire spoke. There was an idea in the back of his head, a foolish idea really, and he was no longer that rash. Across the table from him the vampire jittered nervously in his seat, hardly presenting the continence of a trustworthy soul. A soul, if it was true. What would it take for a vampire to seek out a soul? Something new to research, Giles sighed and added it to his mental list.  
  
"Well, there is something that needs to be done," Giles admitted reluctantly. "And I find myself too busy to.to.I am a bit overwhelmed at the moment. The thing is, someone should be looking after Willow. The ritual will be quite an ordeal. One of the members of the coven could care for her, I suppose, but it would be best if it were someone familiar. Even you, perhaps."  
  
Well then, Spike blinked, Tara had been right after all. How about that?  
  
"Sure," he said. "Yeah. I can keep an eye on Red for you."  
  
"First," Giles said nervously, "I will require some proof that the chip is still, er, functional. I trust that more than any soul cooked up for you by some cave demon."  
  
"Right," Spike said, vamping out and preparing himself for a headache. "One demonstration coming up."  
  
Why oh why couldn't Tara's present have been to get rid of this blooming chip?  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
"Well this is just peachy," Spike said looking around the basement. "My crypt is posher than this."  
  
Giles shot him a Look of Death, which Spike promptly ignored. He thought this Devon Coven was supposed to be something special, but here they were in a basement under a wine shop. Around them swirled people in cheap polyester robes walking carefully so as not to rub out the pentagram on the floor. Chalk, people? He wanted to say. At least use blood, or paint or.he had once used a spell that required a pentagram of molten lead. That had hurt, but still you know, class.  
  
Then he saw Willow sitting in the far side of the room. She looked dirty and exhausted. When he caught her eye her expression was vacant, as though she didn't recognize him or Giles. Not bloody polite that, he thought.  
  
"What's wrong with Red?"  
  
"It's quite strenuous, attempting to end the world," Giles said with a hint of sarcasm. " We won't be able to approach her until the binding ritual is complete."  
  
"Will it hurt her?" Spike asked. In his own ears he sounded dispassionate but he felt an uneasy twinge of.what? He tried to name the emotion. Regret? Compassion? Like playing name that tune with a stack of records you haven't heard since 1923. Or 1880, really, if they'd had phonographs back then. God technology was great. The soul on the other hand was making him feel a bit queasy.  
  
When the members of the coven led Willow into the pentagram, Spike looked around to see if Tara was going to show. He didn't see her. Then the lights went out, the candles were lit, and even with his night vision he couldn't see much of anything. The binding was a bit of a lightshow in itself, of course. The coven chanted in an even rhythm, steady and soothing, although Willow, hugging herself in the center of the circle, looked terrified. As the air around her filled with scarlet light she began to shake, the red glow turned her skin a sickly shade and reflected in her soundless tears. Spike didn't know he had moved forward to help her until Giles caught his arm and pulled him sharply back. The cadence of the chant increased, faster in time with the light that was coalescing around Willow, growing almost solid, wrapping around her body. When the luminous ropes permeated her flesh she gasped and fell, her head making a sickening thump on the floor, smudging the chalk. But that didn't matter now. As the last of the light was absorbed into her skin the chanting slowed and stopped. The coven dispersed, leaving Willow alone and powerless on the floor.  
  
Spike scuffled his heavy black boots over the neat white lines as he walked over to pick her up. In his arms Willow was as pale and light as one of Dru's dolls. Her head lolled back exposing her long neck. Not that he could do anything about it. But still, he thought, a thing of beauty that is.  
  
"I guess she's my responsibility now," Spike said because Giles was staring at him, obviously expecting him to say something.  
  
"Yes. Yes she is. I expect that you will take the utmost care of her." 


	2. 

The coven had offered him a flat, and having seen their little hovel Spike was glad he had turned them down. Instead he found a loft in an abandoned building, too expensive for the owners to fix up and rent, too expensive to tear down and build something new, but it cost him nothing. Everything else he bought. They had been good for a while; put things in lockboxes in banks so they would have something when they got back. He and Drusilla. In the Bank of London he found money that wasn't even in circulation anymore, diamonds his darling had stolen, pearls, rubies, the arm of one of her dolls (what was that doing in there?) knives, bits of hair, his collapsible silk top hat (so that was where that had got to.) He took it all. Sold what he could and brought the rest home with him to keep or burn or drop in the Thames as he pleased.  
  
By the time he brought Willow home the place was all tarted up. There was a bed, table to eat at, leather couch, the gas worked, the shower showered. It should be habitable for a human.  
  
"Twenty four hours and I pulled it together for you, love," Spike told the unconscious girl as he laid her on the bed. "I wonder what they did with you in the meantime. Nothing to make you too happy, I'm sure."  
  
He examined her filthy face. He supposed he could bath her, but then he remembered the last time he had seen a woman in a bathroom: Buffy terrified and pinned against the tiles. Remembering her crying, begging him to stop, bile would have risen in his throat if it could have. Instead he clenched his hands under his arms and waited for the nausea to fade. He left Willow to make a slow, steady circle of the apartment to make sure all the heavy drapes were closed before falling asleep on the long couch.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
"How do I look?" Willow asked in the morning.  
  
She was perched on the edge of the coffee table next to his head. Willow looked awful: dirty and exhausted, dressed in the same filthy black clothes she had on for the binding ritual. Spike gave Willow a groggy, hateful look that would have frightened her in some other lifetime. He hauled himself onto an elbow.  
  
"You're hair's gone all wonky," he said. Why was she asking him this?  
  
"And do you know why?" she asked pertly.  
  
"Do I care?" He didn't care. He really really didn't.  
  
"Because the evil demon doesn't have a mirror in the bathroom. Or in any room."  
  
"It's a loft, Red. There's pretty much only one room," he sighed and fell back. "I'll get you a mirror tonight."  
  
"And a clock?"  
  
Spike didn't use a clock. He could feel the sun rising and falling in the sky. Bloody needy humans.  
  
"And a clock," he agreed.  
  
"Oh. Okay then." She said and wandered back over to the bed. Spike might have savored this conversation more if he had realized it was the last normal one they would have for quite a while.  
  
Willow didn't say much of anything for the next couple of days. She curled up on the bed (his bed. Why hadn't he thought to get two beds?) And she cried until her face was puffy and distorted and she had to blow her nose in the sheets because he hadn't thought to buy tissue or toilet paper because he didn't need them.  
  
He tried, once, patting her shoulder awkwardly and asking if there was anything he could do. She just moaned and turned away from him. So he sat in the far corner of the loft and read Broinberg's Thesis on the Soul and Lady Chatterley's Lover. He oscillated between the two books as he drank disgusting cold pigs' blood out of a chipped mug. Looking at the warm girl on the bed made his stomach rumble.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
"How is she?" Giles asked the next week, his fingers nervously ripping apart the paper napkin on the table in front of him.  
  
Giles and Spike were sitting in a pub down the street from the loft. They had intended to meet in the apartment, give Giles a chance to talk with Willow and see how the spell had affected her. As soon as the Watcher entered the room Willow had begun to scream and shake. He and Spike left her in the loft, crying quietly into her pillow, having decided it would be best to talk elsewhere.  
  
"She's quiet," Spike admitted. "Doesn't want to talk. She seemed fine just after she woke up then she just started crying and hasn't bloody well stopped since."  
  
"Ah," Spike frowned as the waiter brought them their drinks. "Warm beer. Oh how I haven't missed that."  
  
"Mild amnesia is common with spells such as these," Giles admitted, not touching his own drink. "Almost any spell where the caster seeks to, uh, alter the fundamental nature or structure..." he trailed off.  
  
"Yeah. Buffy was pretty dazed when she came back."  
  
"And, and yourself? With the soul?"  
  
Spike considered lying, because it was his business, wasn't it? But then he would have to remember the lie, if it ever came up again, and there was no point in wasting that much energy for no reason.  
  
"I thought I was in the alley again the night I was turned. I was looking around for the woman I had been speaking to. She was so beautiful...and then I remembered everything all at once. Every thing I had ever done or had done to me. It took the wind out of me I can tell you."  
  
"Yes, well. I have to admit I would have expected a more dramatic change."  
  
Spike touched the place where Tara had pressed her fingers over his heart. "Oh, there are changes mate."  
  
Giles looked unconvinced "I expect we will discover whether that is true or not in time. Meanwhile, I have something else that might interest you."  
  
"Interest me more than looking after a hysterical girl? Oh what, pray tell?"  
  
"We recently came across a text. It appears to be some sort of prophecy from what I can tell, which is hardly anything at all. I'm having some trouble with the translation. Do you recognize the language?"  
  
Spike accepted the book thrust across the table at him. It was wrapped in a heavy cloth to protect the fragile, cracked leather. Inside the pages were crumbling to dust and the brown ink, he narrowed his fine eyes, well it was readable, barely.  
  
"Yeah, I can read it. It's written in a dialect of Suturanin. Very obscure. It'll take someone a lot of time to work this out."  
  
"But you can do it?"  
  
"Me? Oh bloody hell. First I'm a babysitter and now I'm a bibliopole?"  
  
"Penitence and all that rot," Giles reminded him smugly.  
  
"Right," Spike said, wrapping the book again. "Neat."  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
When he entered the loft the smell of blood made his mouth dry with thirst. Had some glorious homeless person found his way up here to die and leave him a nice fresh meal? Spike's thoughts ran wild with this kind of idiocy until he realized it must be Willow. Stupid, stupid witch. He lunged through the expansive loft. There was blood everywhere. Running towards the bathroom he skidded on a slick wet puddle of the stuff and fell. It smelled so good. He paused for a moment, considering having a taste, before launching himself upright and storming into the bathroom.  
  
Willow was in the tub, naked, unconscious, and letting the blood from her slit wrists cloud the warm water.  
  
"You have to do something," Tara said, standing next to the tub, a lost and lonely little ghost.  
  
"No shit. Really?" Spike growled, hungry and annoyed.  
  
And scared. Oh shit. If she died he supposed he could have a meal, if there was any blood left in her, but he really didn't want her to die. For one thing he would have to explain the whole thing to Giles. For another, well, she made really nice cookies. As he lifted Willow's limp form out of the water he tried to decide if that was enough of a reason to save someone's life. And he had promised to. There was that of course.  
  
He carried her out to the bed, Tara trailing behind wringing her pale hands. He wrapped Willow in the velvet quilt to keep her warm and began ripping up the sheets for bandages. He hadn't thought to get any of those either. Not very sodding thorough, was he? No wonder none of your bloody plans ever worked, he berated himself.  
  
"Stupid girl," he muttered, wrapping Willow's wrists tightly, "She cut them the wrong way."  
  
"She took aspirin to stop the clotting though," Tara said. It was eerie the way she stood next to him not generating any heat. Was that how people felt around him? Like someone walking over his grave. Ha. Ha.  
  
"Wait," Spike said sharply. "You were here? You saw her?"  
  
"She watched me die," Tara said, reaching a hand towards Willow's face and retracting it. Another wave of nauseating pity swept through him and he didn't know if it was for Willow, or Tara, or for himself. Either way he crushed it down into the small dark hole along with his growing hunger. It was all he could do not to go into game face, and that wouldn't be much help considering what he had to do next.  
  
"I'll take her to the hospital," he told Tara. "She hasn't lost that much blood. She's going to be fine." He hoped she would take a hint and dissipate or whatever it was that ghosts did, but she followed him all the way there.  
  
Tara stood next to him when he called Giles from the hospital payphone.  
  
"Yeah, she's fine. No. Don't come down. At least we bloody well know not to leave her alone now," Spike could not tell he if he was joking and apparently neither could the Watcher. There was an awkward silence. Tara looked so stricken he had to turn away. Bloody stupid, he thought.  
  
"Hey. There is one thing you could do. Send on some of her togs, can you? All she has is what she had on at the ritual and that's pretty. well she was wearing it when she started playing with the knife. Yeah? Good. Thanks." Spike hung up the phone and turned back to the ghost.  
  
"Don't you like your present?" Tara asked him, ducking behind her veil of hair.  
  
"The thing is, pet, I haven't really had a lot of time to try it out." And it itches, he added mentally. And what if it doesn't work?  
  
"Oh. Oh, I see. Yeah," she smiled nervously and darted her eyes to the side so she didn't have to look at him.  
  
"I'll give it a try soon, Okay? Want to make sure Red is feeling better first though, right?"  
  
He said it to make her feel better and it must have because she graced him with a wild look of gratitude before fading away. The woman who was waiting for the pay phone stared at him suspiciously. Must think I'm bloody insane, standing here talking to myself, Spike thought. Well maybe I am.  
  
They sent Willow home in clean teal hospital scrubs and she wore them while they waited for her clothes to arrive from California. She also borrowed one of his black tee shirts, and he didn't fancy having it back now that it smelled all human. At least she stopped crying. Thank heaven, well not heaven, but thank someone for that. Spike thought that things must get better from there.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
"You once offered to turn me into a vampire," Willow said, sitting once again on the edge of the coffee table, next to his head. It was early morning the day after he brought her back from the hospital.  
  
"Sod it all Willow!" Spike groaned. "Do you know the bleeding time? Vigilance is always wakeful, but this evil needs his sodding sleep!"  
  
She pulled the pillow off of his face and he could smell her freshly washed skin. Yummy, he thought.  
  
"Go back to crying," he said cruelly, "You were less of a pain in the arse when you were blubbering."  
  
"Would you turn me now?" Willow asked him, her eyes clear and intent.  
  
She thought it would make all the pain go away. Because Spike, hey! Not really a pain filled guy. Sure there was that weird Buffy obsession and he cried at the funeral and all, but on the whole he wasn't too busy repenting for his sins. Every moment she was awake Willow remembered the joy she felt at seeing Warren's body flayed and dead before her. If she were a vampire she wouldn't care anymore, right? She was pretty sure she was right.  
  
Spike sat up on the couch. If Willow were straight she was positive the sight of his pale, sculpted torso would have impressed her. Like a statue, she thought.  
  
"No, I won't turn you now. Can't for one thing," he said, tapping his forehead. For another, I'd be haunted for the rest of my eternal life by your translucent girlfriend, he added mentally.  
  
"I know. The chip. But I could cut myself and you could drink, right? Then you cut yourself and I drink and, you know. you bury me. I rise again. Hey presto!"  
  
"Hey presto!" He mimicked with a sneer and shook his head. "No. Thanks all the same. I'm not giving the Slayer any more excuses to turn me to dust."  
  
"Right. Because it's All. About. Buffy," Willow snarked.  
  
For a moment Spike looked completely at sea, and Willow supposed she probably shouldn't have brought up Buffy. Buffy and Spike, she thought, how sick was that? It must be lower on the scale than killing people, she reminded herself, or trying to destroy the world. Softly she began to cry.  
  
"No, it's not about Buffy," Spike said, trying to sort out his reaction to her offer. Actually it was tempting. She was cute. She smelled nice. It would be good to choose a partner of his own. Someone who wasn't unstable like Dru or moronic like Harmony.  
  
"It's about you. It wouldn't be good for you."  
  
"You don't think I'd like it?" she sniffed and wiped her nose on the edge of the tee shirt she was wearing. No, he really didn't want that one back. Spike noticed for the first time how sallow she was. Her hands were shaking from exhaustion.  
  
"I think you'd love it. Everybody loves it, the power and the hatred and, well you know what that feels like, right? You tasted the big evil." And he big evil was fun, Spike thought, but now was probably not the best time to bond with her over the joys of wanton destruction.  
  
"The thing is, Willow, taking a walk on the wild side doesn't mean you have to throw away your soul. Everybody does things they regret. You deal with it. You move on."  
  
You don't dream about raping girls on green tile floors or dancing with Dru in languid circles around the bodies of children fresh and sweet and dead. No, you don't do that.  
  
"I tried to destroy the word. You.you're evil and you helped Buffy save the world. Twice."  
  
"So you think you have me out eviled? Sorry, pet. No go. You may have been more powerful, but even with a soul I'm darker then you'll ever be." Oh, shit. There it was out of his mouth and floating between them. Red seemed to have missed it though.  
  
"I hurt people I loved. I almost killed Giles. I."  
  
"But he forgives you. They all forgive you because they love you. Tara does too. I mean she would. What do you think she would say if her death led to your becoming a vampire? She would never forgive you." Spike didn't know if it was the right thing to say but at least it shut her up.  
  
Willow turned away from him and slowly stood up. He could not tell if what he had said did any good. Falling back onto the pillow Spike wondered if he should have turned her when he had the chance. They could have stayed away from America. If Buffy ever found out, well it wasn't likely she was going to leave the Hellmouth and track him down was it? At least Red seemed to have quieted down some. She wasn't crying anymore. Maybe he could still get some sleep.  
  
Willow walked over to the iron and glass kitchen table and unwrapped the book Spike had brought back from the pub yesterday. Her body was screaming for sleep, but she was afraid of the dreams flickering, waiting on the edge of her consciousness. She didn't open the book. It looked to frail to touch.  
  
"Hey? Spike? What's this?" she called across the room, but he was already asleep. ______________________________________________________________________  
  
more.. 


	3. 

"Uh, hello? Buffy?" Giles said into the phone. "I hadn't, that is to say, I didn't think of the time when I called."  
  
"Giles?" Buffy sounded exhausted. "No it's okay, really. I just got in from patrolling. You didn't wake me or anything. I'm just kind of."  
  
"Tired?" Giles supplied.  
  
"I was going to say stinky."  
  
"Oh, well yes. There is that of course," Giles acknowledged. "I was calling to, uh, say hello to you naturally. And because there has been a problem with Willow."  
  
"The spell didn't work?" Buffy asked, suddenly frightened and awake.  
  
"No the spell is fine. She's having some trouble dealing, obviously, with what she has done. I'm afraid she cut her wrists today. She's fine. She's in the hospital. Sp. someone found her in time. We will be keeping a much closer watch on her."  
  
"Oh my god," Buffy's voice became small. "Willow tried to kill herself? That's not. she wouldn't." Slowly Buffy slid down onto the kitchen floor. And then she was crying, which was happening too much lately. Way to make with the tears, Slayer, she berated herself. Buffy bit the inside of her cheek and forced herself to stop. Weeping wasn't going to solve anything.  
  
"What can I do?" she asked in a calmer voice.  
  
"If you could send on her clothes, perhaps any personal items you think she might need. That would be quite helpful. I didn't think to take anything when I returned with her to the coven."  
  
"Should I come out?"  
  
"No. No I don't think that would be wise. She, er, she reacted rather badly the only time I've seen her. I can't imagine you would fare any better. We just need to give her time, Buffy."  
  
Time, Buffy thought, sitting on the floor with her back against the kitchen wall, an old old Slayer. She hadn't realized until she saw Kendra's body that was how it was supposed to go. Come into your powers fighting and die quickly. How much time have I got left, she wondered. But these were old thoughts. Now she was talking to Giles. They had to help Willow.  
  
"Who's looking after Willow now? The coven?"  
  
Giles paused. He was silent so long she thought they had lost their connection.  
  
"Hello? Giles?"  
  
"Yes, well," Giles fumbled.  
  
He could not lie to his Slayer, but did she need to know the truth? Would it hurt her? Perhaps, perhaps he had made the wrong decision with regard to Spike. Even with the chip, even with the possibility of the soul, would it not have been better to drive him far away from Buffy and her circle? He could have ensured she would never have heard from him again, yet he had invited him in. Why? Giles knew his forgiveness could only be stretched so far, but why had it stretched at all?  
  
"Ah, I think I may have, that is, er, given you reason to doubt my judgment. I rather doubt my judgment, actually."  
  
Buffy rolled her eyes. Her Watcher was always such a drama queen. "Spit it out Giles."  
  
"I have asked Spike to look after Willow. With the chip still active he can't hurt her and there may be other. fail safes."  
  
Buffy's stomach clenched. She was euphorically happy that she was already seated when Giles broke the news. How could he let her near Willow? But hadn't she been willing to let him watch Dawn when Willow went all Manic Panic Uber-Witch on them? She didn't want to think about this. She had been so very good at not thinking about this.  
  
"What other fail safes?" she asked, grasping onto his words like a life raft. Please utter something that leads me away from these thoughts, she begged.  
  
"There is the possibility that Spike may have regained his soul. He claims it was restored in Africa."  
  
"It was just lying around on the sand?" Buffy demanded. "And how can you not know?"  
  
"We knew Angel was evil when he began tormenting and killing us. With Spike, well the chip eliminates that option. He has been good with Willow. He saved her life. If he hadn't taken her to the hospital she would have bled to death."  
  
"Maybe he was trying to talk her into a snack?" Buffy suggested tartly.  
  
"No. He was with me when Willow was attempting to.to." "End it all?" Buffy supplied and winced. Slayer wit was grossly out of place in this conversation.  
  
"I don't believe he is any danger to her. No one is expecting you to forgive him. I certainly do not intend to. But, currently, he is useful."  
  
"That's Spike, always one for the usefulness," Buffy agreed.  
  
She had certainly found him useful, and if it wasn't for that vignette in the bathroom she might have felt bad for the way she used him. But not now.  
  
"It's fine. Really. If Spike can help Willow in any way it's all for the good," she paused. "But keep him the hell out of Sunnydale."  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
Willow wasn't inclined to get out of bed so Spike brought her food. That meant pizza and chicken wings and fish and chips wrapped in yesterday's Guardian.  
  
"There's still scales under the batter," Willow objected, wrinkling her nose.  
  
"Welcome to British cuisine, love," Spike said heartlessly.  
  
Willow knew he didn't care. Well, cared a little maybe. Cared enough not to let her slit her wrists or starve to death, but he wasn't exactly hugs and puppies. Willow envied Spike's apathy. There he was, her own little serial killer, calmly turning the pages of that huge book, scribbling out a translation on a yellow legal pad with a cheap ballpoint pen. He might as well be carved out of stone with his heart lying black and useless in his chest. Tara's heart was silent and stony too. Willow let the greasy fish fall to the floor beside the bed.  
  
Her clothes had come, but she still wore the borrowed black tee shirt. Getting dressed would take more energy than she had. Everything was harder without Tara, without the magic. She willed the fish to rise off the floor. One simple levitation spell, couldn't the coven have left her that?  
  
"Give it up, Red," Spike said from the kitchen table.  
  
"Give what up?" Willow demanded. It wasn't like she had been obvious about it or anything.  
  
"You've been trying to cast spells for weeks now. Give it up. It's not going to work. The mojo is all gone." She hadn't bathed in weeks either. Not since he brought her back from the hospital, now that he thought about it. Her pretty red hair was lank and greasy, her skin oily and pungent. To his predator's nose she was rank.  
  
"I have not," Willow lied.  
  
"So you have been staring at that fish for the past twenty minutes because you think it's pretty? Should we hang it on the wall? The place could use with a bit of art now you mention it," Spike said sarcastically.  
  
Willow propped herself up on the bed. "Right. Because you are so very good at giving things up," Willow mocked. "Oh Buffy! I love you!"  
  
Spike looked up from the book then, and placed his pen carefully on the table. His look was so cold that, chip or no chip, she thought he was going to rip out her throat. He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow, which she thought should have made his expression less violent, but it did not.  
  
"Feel better now, do we?" he asked icily.  
  
"I don't want to feel better," Willow growled.  
  
Which was obvious. He wouldn't let her die, and he wouldn't let he join the living dead, but Willow was determined to let go of life as much as possible. It was her punishment, to feel like this. Slowly she slipped back onto the bed, which reeked from two weeks of sweat. She had come to associate the smell with her own self-loathing. Willow ran her hands through her greasy hair. Everything about her was disgusting inside and out. She killed Warren, and she had loved it. The terror in his eyes when she pealed away his flesh.the memory made Willow clench her teeth and fight back the desire to choke up what little she had eaten that day. No more barffing. Spike had made it clear he wasn't going to clean up after her anymore.  
  
Easy for him, she supposed, to not give a shit about any of the disgusting things he had done. With a century of killing, torture and feasting behind him Spike lived his un-life indifferent to the pain he had caused others. At least I'm not a monster, Willow told herself. She embraced the misery because it proved she was nothing like him.  
  
At the table Spike was still watching her with dispassionate blue eyes. He should have let her die. They all should have, she thought. Xander would be angry, but Xander was an ocean away. He had tried calling and writing but she wouldn't talk to him, or to any of her friends. Their affection shamed her.  
  
Well, Spike thought leaning back in his chair and dropping his big black boots on the table, look at the little Nihilist. Perhaps he should have taken a drink when he had the chance? It might have been better to have the Slayer hunting him down than to put up with this crap. Willow, he decided, was worse than Drusilla in her most petulant, childish state. She was like- well she was like Angel, wasn't she? Mopping over all of his past wrongs as though his sorrow could do anything to change them. I'm a murderer. Pity me! Well he didn't, he didn't give a toss about either of them.  
  
Spike gnawed the end of his pen and considered his options. Throw her out on the street and let her sink or swim. That was one idea. Give her kicking and screaming back to Giles- who shouldn't have let him near her in the first place. What had the Watcher been thinking? He couldn't bite her, but he could still gag her and stick her in a closet until she starved to death. Huh. That was an idea.  
  
Only really it wasn't. Spike slammed his hand against the table and the glass cracked. It wasn't any fun coming up with plans he knew he wasn't going to follow through on. He was not going to hurt Willow in the same way he was not going to chase tequila shots with holy water. It just wasn't an option and it pissed him off.  
  
Willow's head popped up at the noise. Spike stood next to the table now. His hands were on his hips and he glared at nothing in particular. Everything was fine then. Miserable human: check. Grumpy vampire: check. All accounted for, Willow thought, falling back into the blankets.  
  
Pacing back and forth Spike missed his duster for the first time. He wanted its weight, its smell, the snap of the leather as he moved. Forget the coat. It's just a thing, he told himself, it's not important. He paused and tried to come up with a list of things that were important to him at that moment. It wasn't very long. In fact it was remarkably vacant. Good, he thought with satisfaction, something familiar at last.  
  
Which still left him with the problem of Willow and her enormous stench. He could just haul her bodily into the shower, but the thought of women and bathrooms still left him a bit queasy. You're turning into a right soft bastard he berated himself. With an idle hand he flipped through the pages of scribbling on the legal pad. Nice to know his penmanship was as poncy as ever. Him mum would be happy to know sending him to public school was money well spent.  
  
"Hey, Red?" he called, not looking up from his notes.  
  
"What?" Came the muffled reply from under piles of blankets.  
  
"Be a dove and bloody well sit up when I'm talking to you," he said. The paternal note in his voice aggravated him to no end. To his surprise she hauled herself upright, glaring at him beneath her mop of unkempt hair.  
  
"You're the big brain, right?"  
  
"Why? Do you need some help moving more evil eggs?" If he wasn't going to kill her or bring her decent food, couldn't Spike just leave her alone?  
  
"Very snide. That's cute," Spike smirked. Willow looked slightly deflated. She had been aiming for hurtful, not amusing. Spike picked up the legal pad and walked over to the bed.  
  
"Do you know anything about translating demon languages?"  
  
"No. Magic, remember? That's my thing." Her lower lip trembled.  
  
If she started crying he was going to bash her head in, Spike decided. He just could not take it anymore. With calculated disdain he sat on the bed, happy he didn't need to breath.  
  
"Well, the magic is gone, pet. It's time to pick up another skill set. Don't worry. The book," he gestured behind him towards the table, "it's not for me. Giles asked me to take a look at it. Remember Giles? Daddy figure? The one you tried to kill?"  
  
Willow began to sniffle. She decided Spike was much better at the whole throwing of insults game. Spike rolled his eyes. He didn't bother trying not to look exasperated.  
  
"Look," he said, "you tortured your friends and now you feel really bad about it. That's. keen."  
  
Willow looked annoyed. That was fine, he was annoying himself here. He gave an aggravated sigh and tried again.  
  
"You can either help me help Giles, or you can- well no, that's the only option. You're driving me out of my bleedin' skull. I've had as much of this moping, whining shit as I can take. This translation's giving me a fucking headache, and you're a quick study so there it is. Decision made." Willow opened her mouth. "Don't argue with me, Red," he warned.  
  
She fixed him with a hollow, glassy stare, but nodded.  
  
"And take a shower already. The stench is killing me," he said turning and walking away. That went well enough, he supposed.  
  
"Spike?" Willow's voice was small behind him.  
  
"Yeah?" he asked, turning again to look at her.  
  
"Why are you doing this, looking after me?"  
  
Oh bloody hell. He shrugged, hoping he looked nonchalant. "Well, somebody has to."  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
"Willow's with him?" Xander demanded. He ducked out of the reach of the attacking vampire and still managed to maintain his outraged expression.  
  
Buffy tried tried tried not to look annoyed. Times like this she was angry at Spike for proving to her friends how stupid she had been. Nice wild doggie, good doggie, he won't rip out my throat. Look! He's housetrained!  
  
"I am not talking about this now: read ever."  
  
Her roundhouse kick went wild because she tried to maintain eye contact with Xander as she spoke. The vampire grabbed her leg and threw her to the ground. Another crushing blow to my ego, Buffy thought. She popped back to her feet before it could attack again.  
  
"Giles says she's safe." Buffy punched, the vamp blocked. "His word is, ouch, good enough for me."  
  
The vamp punched, Buffy rolled with it, dropping her to the ground and staking her. Poof. Buffy coughed in the familiar dust.  
  
"At least you guys didn't bury me in something as bad as that," she joked. Xander was having none of it.  
  
"I don't trust him with her. No, no, whole words of no to this plan," Xander complained, helping her to her feet.  
  
"Hello? It's not my plan. This is all Giles."  
  
"Yeah, but you have influence with him. You're the Slayer," he dropped his voice down to a conspiratorial whisper, "You know you're his favorite." Buffy rolled her eyes, hoping this signaled a return to jokey Xander.  
  
They had begun patrolling together since Willow left for England. Not that Xander was much help. He was better at alternately screaming or cheerleading, but it was good to have the company. Every so often he got to punch something and if it was something that looked like Spike, well so much the better. He and Anya were still doing the big frosty dance of silence and slaying helped Xander work out the frustration. Or watching me slay, Buffy thought. Maybe vicarious revenge works for him. Still, company good. She was firmly seated on The More the Merrier bandwagon.  
  
"If you called Giles and told him it makes you uncomfortable that your attempted rapist is hanging with your friend we both know he would be gone."  
  
Buffy sucked in her cheeks, angry and scowling. They had this conversation about the attempted rape countless times in one form or another since Willow had left. It always led to the same place. Wasn't there a new destination out there waiting for them? But Xander never understood her point of view when his opinion veered off from hers. Buffy tried to think of a new way to say the same thing.  
  
"I'm not the victim here, Xander. I won. He failed. That's a good thing, right? And no, I don't forgive him. Yes, I am angry and betrayed. But you don't get to throw around my anger. He can't hurt Willow and I don't think he would."  
  
"Did you think he would hurt you?"  
  
Buffy winced. "No. But I can see how it happened."  
  
"I can't see how any of this happened," Xander said, looking lost. Then he hardened. "And I don't want him anywhere near Willow. I don't even want him looking at her."  
  
"I know you have become the protector of all things Willow, but it doesn't sound like she wants him to leave. Giles says he's helping." How had she gotten roped into defending Spike? Buffy wondered angrily.  
  
"Oh sure, she doesn't want Mr. Great Cheekbones to leave- not that it would matter to her, but you know some people are swayed by these things," Xander drifted off and Buffy gave him time to regroup.  
  
Not for the first time Buffy wondered what had happened that day on the bluff when the world didn't end. Everything had happened so quickly. Xander and Willow had shown up at her house limping and clinging to one another. Giles, back from the emergency room with his broken ribs poking him with every step, had taken Willow's arm in an iron grip and teleported her back to Devin. Xander never said anything about what passed between them. Every time Buffy had hinted at talking about it he grew hard and tight-lipped. He talked about missing Willow, complained about not knowing how she was doing, but refused to discuss that day.  
  
Xander snapped his fingers loudly. His argument had come to him at last. "Buffy, does she even know what Spike did? Tried to do? If Willow's with him doesn't she have a right to know?"  
  
Buffy's walk slowed down and Xander felt a flush of joy. He had won. Yay him! It wasn't every day one got to win an argument with the Slayer.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
TBC 


	4. 

Sitting on the counter, Willow watched approvingly as Spike liberally sprinkled blueberries into the cooking pancake. She darted a quick hand into the bowl of fruit.  
  
"You do realize if you eat them all you won't have blueberry pancakes?" Spike asked, watching the batter bubble up until he was positive it was time to flip it.  
  
Willow laughed. This was not Spike. Spike would not have cared about how many blueberries per capita her pancakes contained. He probably didn't care now, but he was pretending, and that was nice too. Nice, Willow thought. The Bid Bad was making her breakfast and it was nice.  
  
The pancakes would be the first real food she'd had in the month since she'd been at the loft. Spike was all about take out. Tonight he thought she deserved some sort of reward. Sure, she was still miserable and teary most of the time, but she smelled good again. Working with her on the translation, well it wasn't fun, but it didn't make him want to shove flaming pokers into his eyes either. Willow was quick with the language, and better at picking out patterns than he was. Patience was not one of Spike's virtues, if he had any of those left.  
  
So here he was, cooking. (Which was something he never did even when he needed to eat so why the fuck was he learning now?) Cooking because he thought it would make her a little less miserable and she burned all her pancakes and he seemed to not be terrible at it. Spike shook his head. He couldn't even muster up enough energy to be disgusted with himself.  
  
"What does it feel like, to have your soul back I mean?" Willow asked.  
  
Spike looked up at her slyly. Willow was dressed in her normal clothes again, the ones Buffy had sent. Examining the fuzzy purple sweater and plaid pants, Spike wondered if hospital scrubs hadn't been a more aesthetic fashion statement.  
  
"You remember that conversation, do you? I thought that comment might have slid by."  
  
"I remember. I was just feeling a little distracted what with the horror and the self-pity and all. Actually, the horror? It's still pretty much there." She was trying to keep her tone light for him. Did she really believe Spike worried about whether she was happy or not?  
  
"That's good," Spike said, sliding the pancake onto the finished stack. The batter sizzled as he poured it onto the greased pan. "You should always care."  
  
"So do you care? Now? I mean with the soul? I mean about all the people you've killed." Willow asked him in a rush, amazing herself by asking at all. All the time they had spent together since Giles had brought her to London and she had never asked him anything more personal than how to conjugate a verb form.  
  
Now Spike gave her one of those hard, cold looks that made Willow want to run screaming from the room.  
  
I'm not her sodding girlfriend, Spike thought. What makes her think she deserves answers from me? Because she doesn't. He didn't have explain anything to anybody. Well maybe to Buffy. She deserved an apology. No, what he wanted was to give her an apology. What she deserved was to be left alone.  
  
"Yeah. With the soul there's a whole new fun emotional spectrum." Bloody hell, why was he telling her this? "I've done things as a vampire and regretted them. I regretted it when I hurt Dru. I regretted it when I hurt Buffy. And I thought that was guilt, but it wasn't. I feel.. You know that look of horror on Harris' face when he looked at me? That's how I feel now. I see myself for the monster. Which is bloody funny, actually, because when I got the damn thing I wanted to be more like a man."  
  
He stopped. Willow was silent, having gotten more than she expected out of him. He sprinkled blueberries into the new pancake. His pale fingers were purple and stained. "But I don't feel too bad about most of the things I did. I'm not Angelus. That whole brooding 'oh what have I done' crap just isn't my style. I did horrible things. I had a lot of fun. Do I regret it? Sure. But I can't change it. I can't apologize to each of them. 'Sorry I offed you mate. Wish I could make it up to you.'"  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
Buffy didn't exactly hop on a plane to England the next day. Xander wanted her to, of course, but there were reasons. Dawn needed her for one thing. And she really didn't want to go for another. She could have called. Giles had given her Spike's number. (Spike had a phone? A cell phone? She was more surprised by that then the possibility of him regaining his soul.) Buffy tried to imagine that conversation. No thank you. Besides if she went in person she could see Giles. And she had never been out of the country. The passport had taken a while to come through. That added to the delay. She told herself she would never know how angry she was unless she dealt with the situation in person. Buffy didn't know if she meant angry at Spike or Willow. She didn't give herself too much time to think about it.  
  
It took her almost a month to plan the trip.  
  
"Why can't I go to London with you?" Dawn had griped as Buffy packed her suitcase. Buffy wondered why Dawn thought whining about something made her more sympathetic when all it really did was annoy everyone.  
  
"We talked about this. We don't have the money for two plane tickets." That was a lie. They didn't even have the money for one ticket. Giles had paid for the flight.  
  
"Trust me, sweetie. This trip? Not going to be any fun."  
  
"Do you promise it'll be miserable?" Dawn asked, kind of joking, kind of not.  
  
"Oh yeah," Buffy said, hefting her suitcase. "I promise."  
  
Giles had greeted her at the airport with a hug and a tense smile. "You really didn't need to come," he told her. "Of course I'm happy to see you, but if you would rather not deal with..."  
  
"Giles," Buffy cut him off. "I'm fine. I wanted to come."  
  
She watched Giles carefully as he drove her to wherever it was Spike and Willow were living. At least her Watcher didn't change, she thought. He was her rock. Then again she would have said the same of Willow at one point.  
  
"Promise me you won't change," Buffy said.  
  
Giles laughed softly. "I think it is rather too late for that. I promise not to change in essentials, is that enough?"  
  
"Promise me you won't try to drag the earth into a hell dimension and it'll be enough for me," Buffy sighed. "How is Willow? Have you seen her?"  
  
"Yes, I have spoken with her once. Briefly. She's quite ashamed of herself. As, of course, she should be. I don't think she knows how to reconcile herself to her actions."  
  
"And Spike?"  
  
"I doubt he's overly concerned with making peace with the past."  
  
That wasn't what she had meant. Buffy wasn't sure what she was asking so she left it alone. They drove the rest of the way in silence.  
  
Buffy wanted to go in by herself, but when she saw Giles pull away from the curb she felt oddly abandoned. All grown up now, Buffy. Remember? Irritably she unbuttoned her light coat. London was supposed to be cold, but the late August night was warm and clear. Almost time for Dawn to go back to school. Time for her too. UC Sunnydale had accepted her for the fall quarter.  
  
How am I going to pay for that? Buffy wondered. As she climbed the stairs of the abandoned building she considered asking Giles for a loan. Not a gift: a loan. She practiced the speech in her mind. "I promise I'll pay you back."  
  
She wasn't even convincing herself.  
  
There was only one door at the top of the steps. The lower floors of the building were a wreck of falling plaster and moldy timber. Buffy pushed on the door gently and hoped Willow was safe living here. Because living with Spike, wow that was safe. The door swung open easily. Shouldn't he think about getting some locks installed? This wasn't Sunnydale. There were Big Bads out there that weren't monsters, and he couldn't protect Willow against a human attacker. Could Willow protect herself without her magic?  
  
The space was huge. And not un-nice, Buffy conceded, in that gothic, Dark Shadows style that Spike was fond of. There were candles everywhere. A huge bed was off in one corner, leather furniture, stacks of books, heavy velvet curtains tightly drawn, Buffy's eyes swept over the loft cataloguing everything. Wait. Why was there only one bed? Before she could begin to be horrified by that idea Buffy was distracted by someone laughing. A man laughing.  
  
Moving further into the loft Buffy saw the kitchen area, and next to it the wrought iron and glass table where Spike and Willow sat surrounded by books and piles of yellow legal paper. Buffy had heard Spike laugh before. There was the cruel chuckle, the short guffaw, but she had never heard him tilt his head back and laugh honestly like he was now at whatever Willow was saying. She felt a sudden, irrational hatred towards them both. And what had he done to his hair?  
  
Spike glanced up as she approached and looked properly horrified. His hand, which had been reaching for a wineglass filled with something red, jerked and knocked it off the table. Buffy was pretty sure the liquid all over the floor was blood. It better not be Willow's, she thought. Xander was right; she should have come sooner. Spike frowned and looked at the mess of blood and glass far longer than necessary. He was avoiding turning back toward her, which he did eventually.  
  
"Slayer," he said, standing nervously.  
  
That's what gentlemen used to do, right? Stand when a lady entered the room. Buffy ignored him.  
  
"Buffy?" asked Willow. The former witch turned around.  
  
"Oh! Buffy!" Willow jumped up eagerly and then stopped, as though unsure of what her own reception would be. Buffy smiled genuinely and hugged her friend.  
  
"It's so good to see you, Will," Buffy said.  
  
Even if you're looking tired and haggard, Buffy thought. What is up with the circles around your eyes? Oh, shit. Way to channel Cordelia.  
  
"Are you getting enough sleep?" she asked. Then Buffy remembered there was only one bed and wished she hadn't.  
  
"Oh! I'm sleeping fine!" Willow said with too much energy. "Kind of nightmary and all with the nightmares and the waking up screaming. Actually not sleeping that great now that I think about it. How are you?"  
  
Buffy realized she was making Willow nervous. "I'm great. Really good. I'm going back to school next month. Dawn's starting school in the new high school. Did you know they were re-building it? She was practically begging me to let her come see you. Nobody's mad, Willow. We all miss you."  
  
Buffy looked at Spike. None of us missed you, she thought. He nodded, fully aware of what her glare meant. It was a lie anyway, about them all missing Willow. Anya, never one to just forgive and forget, had volumes to say whenever Willow's name was mentioned. Thank god she couldn't grant her own wishes or Willow would have been sent to a hell dimension or turned into a bowl of rice by now.  
  
"I need to talk to Willow," Buffy told Spike, not looking at him.  
  
"I'll leave the two of you alone then," he said, polite and expressionless. Buffy watched him circumnavigate a wide arc around her, pause at a bookshelf to recover his cigarettes and leave as though neither she nor Willow were in the room.  
  
Willow twisted her hands together and looked nervous. "Hey," she said. "So, what's up?"  
  
Buffy took Willow's hand and lead her over to the leather couch. "I need to talk to you about Spike." She paused. Xander was right, but she so did not want to have this conversation.  
  
"How is Spike?"  
  
Willow gave a nervous laugh. "Oh? He's really, kind of weird. Really weird. Do you know about the soul?"  
  
Buffy rolled her eyes. "I heard a rumor. Do you think it's true?"  
  
Willow bit her lip. She had never considered that it wasn't true. If he didn't have a soul why would he bother taking care of her? Hospital runs? Pancake cooking? Neither were really high on Spike's list of priorities pre- soul.  
  
"He's still pretty scary," Willow admitted, "and kind of obsessive about bathing, but I'm pretty sure about the soul. He's been really nice to me. And the old Spike? I don't think he'd bother. And sometimes he laughs."  
  
"I heard, when I walked in the door."  
  
"Creepy, isn't it? The first time he did that I thought he cracked."  
  
"He was already cracked," Buffy said darkly.  
  
"True," Willow agreed. "He won't talk about you. Ever. It's strange because he used to be all 'Blah blah Slayer. Blah blah Love.' And then there was that thing with Anya."  
  
Buffy cringed when she realized how much there was to tell her friend.  
  
"The thing with Anya? Well, we were over by then. I was pissed and Xander went all homicidal, but if you want to be strictly technical they were both free agents."  
  
"You looked pretty hurt."  
  
"Yeah. I was."  
  
"Is that why he left town?"  
  
"No," Buffy sighed. She hated talking about this. "The night I went after.Warren, and Jonathan and whoever he was, Spike came to the house. I think he wanted to apologize for sleeping with Anya. Dawn told me later she yelled at him for hurting my feelings. In retrospect it probably wasn't her best move. We argued- Spike and I. He got violent and tried to rape me."  
  
"You and Xander in the bathroom." Willow said, horrified, remembering.  
  
"Yeah. Xander ran in right after Spike left."  
  
"Tried," Willow repeated. "But he failed right? He stopped?"  
  
"He stopped after I kicked him across the room."  
  
"Oh," Willow looked ill. "Oh, Buffy, are you all right?"  
  
"I'm fine. Really. But I'm worried about you. Spike can't hurt you, but you deserve to know what he is if you're going to be here with him. Not that we all didn't know what he was in the first place," Buffy looked around the vast room. "And where the hell does he sleep?"  
  
"Here," Willow admitted with an awkward squeak, "on the couch. Buffy! You didn't think that I and he!" she gestured towards the bed. "I mean for one thing. Yuck. Boy. And for another the serial killer past kind of."  
  
"Grosses you out? Yeah. I know." Or I used to know, Buffy thought. Willow was kind enough not to press the point. "It's okay if you want to stay here for a while. If you want to come home that's good too. What do you want to do, Willow?"  
  
Willow pulled her eyebrows together, making her forehead wrinkle. She looked like she wanted to cry.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
TBC 


	5. 

Buffy found Spike smoking on the stairs outside.  
  
"Are you taking her home then?" he asked after several minutes of silence.  
  
"I don't know yet." Would it matter to him if she did? Buffy stared at the vampire and speculated. Was he helping Willow in a sick attempt to get close to her again, or did he really want some sort of redemption?  
  
Spike nodded, and crushed his cigarette beneath the toe of his boot. When he stood up Buffy was glad she hadn't gone all the way down the stairs: she was still taller then he was. He pulled together his courage and met her eye.  
  
"I know it doesn't mean much," Spike said, "but I am sorry."  
  
He looked up at her, his expression soft, his eyes deep and earnest. Buffy wondered, as she had often wondered, where acting left off and reality began.  
  
"You're right. It doesn't mean much. Neither does the soul, if you think that's going to impress me."  
  
"No," Spike said lifting his eyebrows. "I don't think the soul is going to impress you."  
  
Of course I did when I got it, he thought, but that isn't what you asked. Spike thought the soul would do a lot of things that it didn't. For one, he had not thought she would smell like food anymore, but she did. He could hear her heart beat from where she stood and it filled him with more than one kind of desire.  
  
Spike looked so beautiful in the moonlight, all black and white and sincere. Buffy was relieved to find it didn't move her at all.  
  
"Is there any thing else?" she demanded.  
  
"Just one thing." Spike bent down and picked up a dark, rectangular box from the step he had been sitting on. "It's a present," he said wryly, extending it out to her.  
  
Buffy was pretty sure she didn't want any of his presents. Even so she took it, avoiding touching his cold fingers. Inside the box was an intricately carved, red lacquered stake. As far as stakes went, she supposed, it was stunning.  
  
"It looks Chinese," she said.  
  
"It is. I picked it up during the Boxer Rebellion. Forgot I had it actually. Found it again in a bank vault."  
  
A wave of sick understanding passed through Buffy. "It was hers. The first Slayer you killed. Why give it to me?"  
  
And why keep it at all? Was it a prize, like the duster had been? There wasn't much else it could be.  
  
"I'm offering you a chance to finish her job," Spike said. He wished she would because standing there in the light of her contempt, he regretted the soul for the first time. He had preferred not understanding how much he deserved Buffy's hatred.  
  
"You want to fight?" Buffy lifted the stake out of the box. She wasn't sure she would refuse him one last dance.  
  
"No I don't want a bloody fight. I lied to you. I told you to trust me. I betrayed you. I'm offering you retribution."  
  
He was so serious. Did Spike realize how ridiculous this sounded to her?  
  
"You'll just let me stake you?" Don't tempt me, Buffy thought. One quick thrust and she would be rid of this sly, murderous creature forever. She could do it. She had sent Angel to hell. Killing Spike should be a cakewalk, right?  
  
Spike nodded, watching her. He looked curious, but not scared. Buffy hefted the stake in her hand.  
  
"Are you afraid to die?"  
  
"I'm already dead," he reminded her.  
  
"Well, yeah," Buffy said walking down the remaining steps. "I mean afraid to die more. Die forever."  
  
Spike didn't say anything, but she already knew the answer. No, of course he wasn't. Buffy slid the stake into her coat pocket.  
  
"I'll keep the offer in mind." Not a cakewalk after all; not if he was helping Willow. Not if the soul was real. Spike with a soul? It sounded like a bad dream.  
  
Buffy reached into her other pocket and brought something out, her fist tightly wrapped around it.  
  
"I have something for you too," she told Spike, opening her hand. Resting on her palm was an irregular piece of purple crystal, perhaps the size of a thumb.  
  
Spike gave her a questioning look, but there was nothing to read in Buffy's blank stare. Obviously, he thought, this was not some token of affection. He picked up the crystal deftly between his thumb and forefinger, careful not to touch her skin, and held it up to the dim light. It looked like a rock, kind of pretty, mostly worthless. Spike turned to ask her what it was meant to be when the crystal burst into flames.  
  
"AH!" he exclaimed, dropping the burning rock onto the sidewalk.  
  
Buffy laughed as he waved his singed hand wildly in the air. She wasn't sure that had been the reaction she was hoping for, but at least it was amusing.  
  
"Ha bloody ha. You're too good to stake me but setting me on fire is a joke?"  
  
Buffy sat down on the concrete stairs. "You're fine. Stop being such a baby. I asked Anya to cook up a test to prove if you had a soul or not."  
  
"Take it I passed?"  
  
"Yeah. No soul and it would have turned black."  
  
Spike nodded and looked out across the street away from her, exhausted by her presence. Without the duster he looked oddly naked.  
  
Buffy wondered if Spike still loved her. Angel loved her with a soul and hated her without it. Soul-free Spike had loved her beyond all reason. What if whatever he saw in her that made her special was only important when he was evil? Stop it, she ordered herself. No more riding down the highway of self-pity.  
  
"Was it for me? The soul I mean."  
  
"Yeah," Spike gave a short, bitter laugh. That was the laugh she remembered. "The soul was for you. Feel free to commence with the mocking."  
  
"Not now. Maybe later. My head's still all fuzzy from the jet lag."  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
Anya didn't notice the swarm until it invaded the Magic Box. At first she didn't mind because the little blue bugs, with their long translucent wings, were kind of pretty. She lifted up a hand to touch one before she saw the cruel black stinger. Then it was too late and the horrid creature had buried its dagger in the soft palm of her hand.  
  
"Ow! Shit!" she exclaimed, and flattened the bug against the counter with a handy deck of tarot cards. "How's that for vengeance?" she demanded of the gooey black smudge.  
  
Deftly Anya removed the stinger from her hand and wiggled her fingers experimentally. It hurt like hell, but didn't seem to be poisonous. At least not to vengeance demons.  
  
There were four or five other bugs floating around the shop like lint. They were not acting aggressive, but weirdness usually equaled badness on the Hellmouth. Anya ticked through her options in her head. Call Buffy, this was her deal, right? But no, Buffy was in England with the evil mind warping witch who would not be named, at least not by her because then she would have to think about Willow and get upset all over again. Right, so no Slayer. No Spike either, not that bugs were really his thing. Dawn had been permitted to patrol when they went out as a group, but she wasn't exactly an asset. Besides she was staying with Xander until Buffy returned. Xander.maybe she could convince Giles to move the Magic Box to a location in LA? The place was a disaster now anyway. Hesitantly she reached for the phone and dialed Xander's number. One ring. Two rings. Three rings.  
  
"Anya! Bugs! Big blue bugs everywhere!" Xander exclaimed from the door.  
  
So far the best way Xander had come up with to keep from fighting with Anya was to strictly talk shop. This strategy was making him sound constantly panicked in his own ears. He wondered if she noticed. The 'Open During Construction' sign fell to the floor when Xander slammed the door behind him. He bent down to pick it up.  
  
"Xander," Anya frowned and placed the phone back on it's cradle. "You're never home when I call you. Why are you dressed like the Bride of the Beekeeper?  
  
Do brides wear Carhart jackets? Xander wondered, before he realized she meant the silk scarf draped over his face like a veil. It was one of her scarves, actually.  
  
"Our little blue friends have been stinging people out on the streets. People fall down go boom. I need to keep my skin covered. Have you ever seen anything like this? Are these demon gnats?"  
  
"I don't know what they are," she said ducking behind the counter. Anya shuffled around among the boxes and bottles. It really was time to do a little re-organizing down here.  
  
"Well, any great ideas? Is there a spell for a magic fly swatter? Oooooh! Or maybe a giant bug zapper! Could we conger one of those up? Is there pest control in the underworld?"  
  
Beneath the counter Anya rolled her eyes. She hated it when he thought he was funny, which was always. Oh, there it was. She popped up triumphantly from behind the counter. Like a cat she stalked one of the humming creatures through the store, aimed, and fired her weapon. The wasp hung in the air, confused, before it wobbled and fell to the floor where Anya crushed it, possibly ruining her rather expensive shoes. Damn it.  
  
"Well, Raid seems to work on them," she said.  
  
"Great, finally a danger that the average Sunnydale resident can deal with."  
  
"No," Anya shook her head. "I don't think so." She tossed him the bug spray. "You kill the ones in the magic box, and make sure Dawn's all right. I'm going to go get Buffy."  
  
"Yeah," Xander said, catching the canister. He wanted to tell her to say hi to Willow, let him know how she was doing, but that wouldn't have been one of his better ideas. "Hurry back," he said instead.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
Willow had made breakfast. That part had been okay, because Buffy and Giles got to sit at the table while she stood with her back to them facing the stove. That way she didn't have to look at the accusation she was sure their faces would contain. Then came the awful part where the cooking was all done and it was time to sit down at the table. The sitting was fine. It was the eye contact Willow did not feel up for.  
  
Eating with Giles wasn't as awkward as she thought it was going to be. He didn't say anything about the torture. He had just smiled and said they were all very happy she was back to normal. Of course she wasn't, but it felt good to pretend. Willow sat silently by content to listen to Giles and Buffy talk about mundane things. Spike sat on the leather couch, thumbing through the Ratsgninrom Manuscripts, pointedly excluded.  
  
"I'm not actually sure you'll need a loan," Giles said. Buffy worked for a minute at hiding her disappointment and then gave up. Full pout mode was going to be required here.  
  
"I've tried the whole jumping into the work force with a high school education thing, Giles. Doublemeat Palace money isn't going to cover tuition, the mortgage and food and I promise I'll pay you back. I'll write it out in blood if you want."  
  
"No, that really won't be necessary. What I am attempting to say is that I have spoken to the Council. Despite it being highly irregular, they are prepared to furnish you with a salary." Giles paused while he chewed. "Oh, my Willow. This omelet is tremendously good."  
  
Buffy scooted her own food around on her plate. Her appetite was rapidly dwindling. "Strings, right? There have to be strings."  
  
"You would have to keep them moderately informed, yes. But they are willing to let you choose your own Watcher."  
  
"The Council is getting pretty free with its money these days," Spike said from across the room.  
  
Damn vampire hearing, Buffy thought.  
  
"Yeah," Willow agreed. "They're paying Spike for the manuscript translation. Having a vampire on salary, that's weird for them? Right?"  
  
Buffy shot Spike a contemptuous look. "You're working for the Council?"  
  
"I'm trying to do good," Spike snapped back. And not to loose my temper, he added silently. Why didn't she just grab the witch and go home? He would rather take a jaunt into a hell dimension than have her staring at him like that.  
  
Willow cleared her throat awkwardly and tried to think of something that would diffuse the tension. Before she could there was a soft ripple and Anya was standing in the kitchen with them.  
  
"Willow! My don't you look haggard?" Anya looked for a moment like she wanted to say something more and then changed her mind. "I'm looking for Buffy. Oh! There you are. You really need to come home now."  
  
"Is it Dawn?" Buffy asked, frightened and confused.  
  
"No. Just your average demon invasion." Anya handed Buffy an envelope. "I procured you a plane ride home."  
  
"I haven't even been gone twenty-four hours," Buffy complained to no one in particular.  
  
"You're the Slayer, remember? This is what you do. Now come home and kill things. I have to return and help Xander hold down the fort. Oh! Hello Giles! Bye everyone!" Anya hastily rippled away again.  
  
Buffy looked down at the plane ticket in her hand. "Crap," she said.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
TBC 


	6. 

It was night by the time they got back to California. Xander and Dawn were in the Magic Box, empty canisters of Raid rolling around their feet like oblong marbles. The floor was coated in slimy, crushed bugs.  
  
"Buffster!" Xander called out. "Welcome home! And what a lovely home it is to return to."  
  
Xander paused. "Willow?" He rushed to the door and enveloped the wane looking red head in a crushing hug. She smiled timidly.  
  
"Hey Xander."  
  
"Wow, Will! I wasn't expecting you home so soon," And possibly not ever, Xander thought. "This is great! This is.. Good god what is he doing here?" Xander demanded when he noticed Spike looming behind Willow and Buffy.  
  
The vampire looked the same, pale, dressed in black, with a heavy duffle bag over his shoulder. His hair was a more natural shade of blond. What, Xander wanted to know, was with Spike and his hair? No, what he really wanted to know was why the fuck he was in Sunnydale? Focus. It was all about focus.  
  
"Spike?" Buffy asked nonchalantly. "He's leaving. Aren't you?" She turned and glared at the vampire.  
  
"Yeah, that's what I'm doing," he agreed coldly. Spike would grovel in front of her privately, but he'd be damned if he would do it in front her friends. Before he turned to go, Spike gave Willow a reassuring smile. Xander was horrified to see her smile back, just a little.  
  
There goes my Watcher, Buffy thought. That was possibly the stupidest split second decision she had ever made. Better the evil you know was what she had told Giles. Better Spike as a Watcher in name only than deal with some new uptight, tweed clad, by the book drill sergeant who thought he had some authority over her. Spike would at least stay the fuck out of her way. Or so he had promised. Unfortunately Buffy knew now how much value to put on his word of honor.  
  
Buffy turned back to Xander, preparing herself for his look of anger and betrayal. Nope, she hadn't quite been ready for that.  
  
"It makes sense," she told him. Buffy caught Dawn's confused expression. "I'll explain everything later. Let's just deal with the evil at hand. What is the evil at hand?"  
  
Xander didn't say anything, just stood before her accusingly.  
  
"Did you find anything out about the invasion?" Willow asked, threading her arm comfortingly through Xander's.  
  
Huh, Xander thought. Look at Willow, sallow and faded, trying to reassure him. If she could deal then he supposed he could too. For now.  
  
"Yeah," Xander said walking arm and arm with Willow back to the book encrusted table. I think we figured out what the bugs are."  
  
"Eh-hem!" Dawn cleared her throat loudly. "I believe I was the one who found the bad guy. That's me. I'm research girl."  
  
"Yes," Buffy said with a smile. "You get a shiny gold star. What have we got?"  
  
"This," Anya held up a book. Buffy compared the drawing to the squashed bugs on the floor.  
  
"No offence, guys, but they don't really look the same."  
  
"These," Anya pointed to the floor, "are only drones. The picture is if of the Queen."  
  
"Of course it is. My what pointy teeth she has."  
  
"And many rows of them," Anya agreed. "There is more strangeness to relate. According to the news reports many people have been knocked out by our little stinging friends. Some have been abducted. So far all of those taken have been men."  
  
"That sounds like strangeness," Buffy agreed. "I wonder if the Queen Bee is here for a reason, or if it's just drawn to the Hellmouth's mystical energies?"  
  
"I could go online, see if we can find a pattern to the men who were taken," Willow offered. "I should be able to find out from the hospital exactly what the bug stings are doing, if they're fatal or not."  
  
Buffy looked reluctant at this suggestion. "Are you sure you're ready to just jump back in, Will?  
  
"Yeah, I am. I want to help. I can do this, all magic free now," she promised them.  
  
"I know. Okay. Give it your best shot."  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
Willow had not turned up much by the next morning when they gathered at the Magic Box to compare notes. None of the abducted had any criminal backgrounds. They came from no specific part of town, didn't have similar jobs or share race or economic status. So much for the information super highway.  
  
"I'm coming up with a big nothing here," Willow confessed. After a night of research she hated her candy colored computer, hated how slow and pointless everything was. Once again she was completely useless.  
  
"There has to be a pattern, we're just not seeing it," Buffy insisted.  
  
"They are all men," Anya pointed out. "Doesn't that sort of scream pattern right there?"  
  
"You don't think it's some sort of breeding thing do you?" Dawn asked. "Because: gross."  
  
Her sister looked disgusted, Buffy thought, and yet faintly hopeful. Oh shit. It was time to have the talk about boys. Again.  
  
"I'm going to rule out the breeding idea until forced not to," Buffy said, wrinkling her nose.  
  
"On the good news front, the stings aren't deadly," Willow said looking up from her laptop. Anya noticed the blue glow from the screen made her look worse than ever. Well, good, the demon thought.  
  
"The bugs give off a mild toxin that paralyzes the victim, but the effects only last for a couple of hours. I'm sorry I can't come up with anything more."  
  
"You're doing great, Will," Xander said squeezing her hand.  
  
Willow gave him a tight smile. His affection was so embarrassing. She had almost killed them all; she didn't deserve this unadulterated love. It was easier living with Spike who was apathetic even when he did things that could be considered kind, and never asked more of her than to bath once a day. Well, and to help translate an incredibly complex demonic manuscript.  
  
"We're not going to find out much more online. I think it's time I go and meet mama," Buffy said.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
That night, creeping into the abandoned warehouse, Buffy decided this probably was a stupid idea.  
  
"This was a stupid idea," Anya said, unable to see the angry look the Slayer shot her. The bugs couldn't do more than annoy the demon who moved comfortably through the glittering blue swarm in her jeans and leather jacket. Buffy felt like a mummy with her leather gauntlets, heavy jacket, tightly wound scarf protecting her neck, and fencing mask over her face. Thank god Giles had left all his training equipment behind when he went back to England.  
  
They must have the right place. The air was so thick with bugs Buffy felt like she was pushing her way through a shimmering blue wall. The insect wings glittering in the flashlight's beam were actually quite pretty, she thought. Then her foot hit something soft. Bending down, pushing though the spinning bodies in the air, Buffy tried to catch a glimpse of what she had stepped on.  
  
"Ick. I think we found the missing men, or at least one of them." Buffy leaned down to get a better look. She saw fingers and a wrist, but couldn't get a pulse through her leather gloves.  
  
"I think we just found the Queen," Anya countered. Buffy turned as Anya fired a bolt from her crossbow into a giant, multifaceted eye. Good shot, Anya congratulated herself because it was obvious Buffy wasn't going to.  
  
Giant bugs, Buffy thought, lunging at the creature with her axe. Why was it always big insects? They weren't exactly cute when they were small. Blown up thirty feet high this creature was defiantly barf worthy. She moved in, chopping at it's face and eyes. Anya reloaded her crossbow and fired again.  
  
Duck and thrust and chop and turn. This isn't so hard, Buffy thought. Mamma bug swatted her away with a hairy antenna and Buffy popped back up. The Queen was bleeding a dark blue liquid from the cross bow bolts and axe cuts, but she advanced steadily. Buffy attacked again, attempting to sever the bug's head. She was starting to get tired.  
  
"Hey Buffy," Anya called when she shot all of her bolts into the eyes and throat of the creature. "Shouldn't it be dead by now?"  
  
"I would have thought so," Buffy panted.  
  
"Maybe we should run away," Anya suggested, as the injured, oozing mass continued slowly towards them.  
  
"Oh yeah," Buffy agreed.  
  
The swarm around them grew even denser. She grabbed Anya's hand and plunged blindly though the humming mass, down invisible hallways, and out into the bug infested air. They kept running long past the edge of the industrial district even though the insects around them didn't seem to be attacking.  
  
"Since we're not dead, does this count as a success?" Anya asked.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
Xander decided that, considering the paralyzing bug infestation, the crew probably shouldn't be at the job site today. The Hellmouth was a capricious place to try to finish a contract. On the other hand, lots of destruction meant new buildings were always going up. Sure it was bad for society, but good for him.  
  
Xander listened to the phone ring as he peeled a green apple. His goal was to achieve one long ribbon in one hand, one completely naked apple in the other. Things like this tended to impress Dawn, now he was finding himself impressed by them too. With Anya hating him he had to take approbation where he found it.  
  
"Hey Nicole? Is Richard there?" He asked into the phone, "I want to let him know I'm calling off work for the day. Thought I'd give the city time to deal with this bug problem."  
  
"Richard's not here," Nicole said, sounding a little guilty. "He's missing. Not that I give a shit after what he did to me."  
  
"What did he do to you?" Xander demanded. "Did he hurt you?" Richard was a pretty quiet guy at the sight, but who knew what people were like at home? Sometimes he forgot that vampires weren't the only evil lurking out there.  
  
In his concern Xander forgot about the apple until the knife slit the pad of this thumb. Feeling manly he stifled an exclamation of pain.  
  
"No he.he left me for some little slut he met. Didn't even have the balls to tell me himself. Left me a note last week." She laughed. "Not that you need to know this."  
  
Thumb in his mouth, Xander didn't say anything and she went on.  
  
"My friend Sonya? Her husband's been seeing their lawyer. We think they must have finally got what they deserved. It was funny, you know? But now it's been days and I guess it wouldn't be too funny if they were dead. Well, maybe a little funny."  
  
"Maybe," Xander said, agreeing without really thinking about it. He hung up the phone with a horrible feeling. On his way out the door he threw the apple and ribbon of peel in the garbage. He had lost his appetite.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
"I don't get it," Buffy said, looking around at the gang gathered in her living room the evening after her full frontal assault on the Queen. "The thing should have been dead."  
  
"I think I get it," Xander said angrily. "You can't kill the bug. A curse can only be lifted by the vengeance demon that sent it, right Ahn?"  
  
"Well that, or by destroying her pendant," she told them factually.  
  
"Then why don't you lift the curse already?"  
  
"Because, Xander, I didn't curse anyone. I haven't since regaining my powers. D'Hoffryn is quite unimpressed with me at the moment." Anya's voice was matter of fact, but the look she shot Xander was scathing.  
  
"But! But I found the pattern!" he objected. "The men were all cheating on their significant others. Well, two of them were. Could it be Hallie?"  
  
"Two men?" Anya asked. "Out of how many?"  
  
"Twenty-six so far," Willow said.  
  
"Great pattern, Xander," Anya said, clapping her hands in the air and stunning a stray bug that had wormed its way into the house. She tried to imagine the inert blue body on the floor belonged to her ex-fiancé.  
  
"So where does that leave us?" Dawn asked.  
  
"A whole lot of nowhere," Buffy sighed.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
At dusk Spike climbed to the top of his crypt. The cell phone could not get a decent signal inside. Spread out below him Sunnydale was sprawling and ugly. Its low, squat buildings and ragged palm trees could have belonged to any number of interchangeable California towns. To the naked eye it looked dreary and unimportant. Camouflage, Spike supposed, for the Hellmouth. It was all so bloody normal, yet here he was, possibly the most abnormal vampire in history: finally wrested the title from Angel (bloody git.) One soul, no strings attached. Take that grandpa. Being the only one, not belonging anywhere, it had never bothered Spike. What bothered him more was the idea this shit hole had some claim on his affections.  
  
The stupid, happy, hopeful bastard in him sang, "She asked me to come back!" He decided that was the demon, that insipid little voice. The soul cringed at her proximity and longed to be thousands of miles away from Buffy Anne Summers. He didn't know if that was chivalry or cowardice and he didn't care.  
  
Above the still trees the moon was almost full. It's light turned Spike's pale hands silver as he dialed the phone. Best to call Giles now, before doing a sweep of his cemetery. He had promised Buffy he would keep it clean, save them both from unexpected encounters.  
  
"Ah. Spike," Giles complained into the phone. "You do realize there is a time difference between California and England, do you not?"  
  
Spike lay back against the rough stone of the crypt's roof. He wanted to see the stars but they were completely obscured by the ambient light of the town.  
  
"I know the time. Do you want to hear what I've got or not?"  
  
"How is Buffy?"  
  
"I don't know." It was the right answer, and it was true.  
  
"Good," Giles said, relieved. "Then I take it you are calling in regards to the manuscripts?"  
  
"No. I just thought you'd like to have a midnight chat. The sound of your voice, Watcher, it sends me over the edge." He lit a cigarette. Giles obviously refused to respond to his mockery so Spike went on. "The manuscripts prophesize an apocalypse."  
  
"Yes. Of course they do." Giles sighed heavily into the phone.  
  
"If you already know this I'd just as soon free up my time for poker."  
  
"What? No. I only meant it is always something apocalyptic. With us."  
  
"Well we should see this one coming," Spike said. Since he could not see the stars he watched the iridescent insects wing their way around his cemetery. "There will be three warnings."  
  
"What sort of warnings?" Giles sounded more awake now.  
  
"The first is the Host. Sounds like your typical over-run the body and leave an ugly corpse sort of bloke. From what I can tell it should be a collective conscious demon- all parts are the whole, blah blah. Of course there's only about a hundred species of those. I haven't managed to narrow it down yet."  
  
"And the other warnings?"  
  
"I don't know." The frustration sounded in Spike's voice, which frustrated him even more. "This thing is bloody killing me. I can make out something about death, then there will be a period of calm and some sort of rising or lifting. An earthquake maybe?"  
  
"What does Willow think?"  
  
"How the fuck should I know? She's home with Buffy. I can't exactly ring her up." Spike had hoped Willow would call him. He did not use the word hope in his own mind, but acknowledged quietly that hearing from the ex- witch would not be unwelcome.  
  
"Well. I trust you will be will be able to solve this problem on your own."  
  
Trust? Really? Well that was just bloody perfect, Spike thought hanging up the phone.  
  
Lighting another cigarette, Spike briefly entertained burning the manuscripts and letting the world go to hell if that was what it really wanted. Why did he and Buffy waste so much energy stopping the inevitable? Before Spike could think of an answer someone's soft fingers brushed the back of his neck, startling him.  
  
"Jumpy." Tara smiled.  
  
Ballsy witch, Spike thought. She would never have dared to touch him when she had breath. He gave her a feral growl for her trouble.  
  
"I don't think you're really that mad at me," Tara said, looking directly in his face, her hair tucked behind her ears.  
  
"Shows you don't know much about my thoughts," Spike said shortly.  
  
So you say, Tara thought, but his aura was a bright and luminous blue, whorls of light enveloping the darkness. She reached out a hand to see if it felt as soft as it looked and Spike recoiled. Slowly Tara let her hand fall. She could see she was confusing him.  
  
"Don't forget about Willow. Don't get," she rolled her eyes, "distracted by other.things."  
  
Spike didn't know if she meant Buffy or the manuscripts or some other diversion he was not yet aware of.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
TBC 


	7. 

Anya popped back to the warehouse alone the next day after she closed the Magic Box. Nobody had asked her to. Nobody asked her much of anything, really. They were too busy waiting and watching to see when she would do something evil.  
  
Vengeance isn't evil, she thought, it's justice: disproportionate justice. Around her the insects shimmered and hummed. None of them had tried to sting her since the first one she saw in the Magic Box. Maybe they could sense she was a demon. Their wings brushed Anya's cheeks like children's fingers. Why was she here anyway? For the Scoobies? For Xander? She wasn't exactly in the Slayer's inner circle. They only came to her when they needed help. They used her like they used Spike.  
  
That stupid vampire never could control his temper.  
  
She almost went to Buffy, in those first moments of anger after he attacked her. But the Slayer's desire for vengeance was so fleeting Anya didn't have time. Buffy's anger had flickered on the edge of the demon's consciousness and then dissipated before Anya even knew it was there. I should have been faster, Anya thought. Then she would have had the satisfaction of incinerating something. She wasn't really that angry with Spike, but it was frustrating to have so much power and not be able to use it at will!  
  
Moving through the warehouse was like walking blindly through thousands of beaded curtains. The sensation of little blue bodies constantly against her skin was beginning to make Anya claustrophobic. She tried to think of something else. Would Giles really care if she moved the Magic Box to LA? She didn't think so. They could afford some nice little store on Rodeo Drive. She wouldn't mind working in a smaller place as long as it wasn't in Sunnydale.  
  
Good! She had finally found the bodies! Well, not so good because they looked really uncomfortable with their stomachs filled with those gestating eggs pulsing below the surface of their skin. The abducted men were strung up along the walls of the warehouse, held in place by what looked like typical monster snot. Their stomachs were grossly lumpy and distended. Too bad for you, Anya thought as she checked the pulse of the man nearest her. Yep. He was alive. At least Dawn would be happy to know she was right about the breeding thing. Dawn always liked to be right.  
  
"I'll get you my pretty," Willow warned, creeping up on the shimmering blue bug in the Summer's kitchen, mason jar at the ready. She pounced, and then screamed as Anya appeared directly in her path. The demon dissipated and reappeared on the far side of the room. Willow fell hard against the counter.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
"She's gone all evil again!" Anya complained to Dawn who had run in when she heard the noise.  
  
"Have not!" Willow exclaimed. "I mean- for one thing I can't." She tried not to sound bitter. Judging from Anya's expression she was failing. The demon smoothed the sleeves of her suede coat and looked unimpressed.  
  
"You can still do evil," Anya kindly pointed out, "just not magically."  
  
Dawn bit her lip as Willow's face darkened. Willow looked like she was going to say something harsh, possibly about Anya's own demonic relation to the good/evil fault line. Instead Willow slammed the glass jar down over the bug that had landed next to her on the counter.  
  
"I could have brought you a bug back from the warehouse if I knew you wanted one." Not that I would have, Anya thought. She turned to Dawn. "And you were not incorrect about the men. They are being used to gestate the host's eggs. I doubt they'll survive the hatching."  
  
"That's really disgusting," Dawn cringed. "Willow, what are you going to do with that thing?"  
  
"I was going to study it, you know, see if we can learn anything. And if not, hey! Everybody needs a pet, someone to talk to." Willow flinched at the looks on their faces. Apparently it was too early to be making with the jokes.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
Buffy really did not want to go to the crypt. Pushing open the door she hated how familiar it smelled: the rock and dust and candles. As always the TV was on. She snuck in slowly, hoping to surprise him.  
  
"Clem?"  
  
"Arrgh!" Clem shouted, jumping out of his chair. "You, ha, you're a quiet girl, Slayer," he complimented her, looking awkward. He hoped she wasn't going to kill him for taking Dawn to Rack's last spring. She looked like she wanted to kill something.  
  
"Is Spike here?" she demanded.  
  
"He's downstairs."  
  
"Has he been laughing?" Buffy asked suspiciously.  
  
"Not that I've noticed," Clem said timidly. "Although he has been swearing a lot."  
  
That was fine, Buffy thought. She could handle swearing.  
  
Spike did not look up when she descended the ladder although Buffy was sure he could sense her presence. He could probably smell her. That thought alone made her want to run home. But no, she was not going to be afraid. Not of him. Her fist tightened around the lacquered stake in her pocket.  
  
"Come to finish me off then, have you?" Spike asked. He sat cross-legged on the bed, surrounded by books. He did not want to look at her. In her presence Spike knew, because the soul screamed it at him, that she had never loved him, could never love something as base as he had been.  
  
"I need your help," Buffy said. He looked at her then, surprised.  
  
"That is what Watcher's do," Spike said evenly. He had been watching her for a long time now, he knew, and Buffy had never found his stalking very helpful.  
  
Buffy stared at him, thinking of all the things that had happened in this cave: Spike chaining her up and promising to kill Drusilla, finding the Buffy shrine, wild, breathtaking, never quite reaching the bed sex, demon eggs hatching. Mostly not good things had happened here. Under her gaze Spike's implacable expression was slowly turning to something resembling guilt. That would be the soul, Buffy thought, and I don't care.  
  
The silence stretched out between them.  
  
"Whatever happened to my duster?" Spike asked suddenly. He'd been wanting to know and there was never going to be a natural time for that question, was there?  
  
"I burned it," Buffy said defiantly.  
  
"Did you now?" Spike looked slightly amused. " Have a nice little marshmallow roast?"  
  
Buffy collapsed in an old Victorian chair. She hated it when he was disarming like this; there was always some ulterior motive. "I didn't think of it," she admitted.  
  
Spike held up the small red volume he had been thumbing through. "I've been reading the Slayer's Handbook. It's obvious Giles never gave it to you."  
  
"Kendra had one," Buffy said with a sad smile. You remember Kendra, right Spike? The Slayer your girlfriend killed?  
  
"What does it say?"  
  
"The usual crap you would expect from the Council. A Slayer walks alone. Listen to thy Watcher. Walk softly and carry a pointy stick." He reached out and passed the book to her. Buffy wrinkled her nose.  
  
"Can I burn it?" she asked.  
  
"Only if I get to roast a marshmallow."  
  
Buffy smiled at this, and then frowned. There will be no laughing with the evil fiend, she ordered herself. Spike took her mood change in stride.  
  
"What do you need help with? Is it the bugs?"  
  
Buffy nodded. "It's been a week and still nada with the pest control. I found the Queen but I can't seem to kill the damn thing. Dawn looked it up in one of the texts at the Magic Box. A Sgubykci demon? Does that mean anything to you?"  
  
"Oh. Shit." Spike said standing and walking over to the manuscript laid out on a nearby table. "I think my calculations were off then."  
  
"Spike! What did you do? If this is like the eggs I'm going to dust you and use you to grit my driveway this winter!"  
  
Spike turned and gave her a contemptuous look.  
  
"At least I would if it snowed in California," Buffy concluded lamely.  
  
"Sorry to disappoint you, Slayer, but this is beyond me." Even without the soul, Spike thought. "According to the Ratsgninrom Manuscripts there will be three portents: the Host; the Massacre; and the Rising Death."  
  
"This is Sunnydale, we have rising death every night. So let me guess. Three portents and then the end of the world."  
  
"Very good. The Slayer gets a cookie. I think it would be safe to assume our little bug problem is the Host. I would have put that together sooner except I thought we had more time. I thought we had sodding years. This manuscript is going to drive me out of my skull." Spike's eyebrows constricted, wrinkling his forehead in frustration.  
  
"Does it say how to kill the Host?" Buffy asked, all business.  
  
"No," Spike paced back and forth. "Although obviously you do, or the next portent wouldn't be able to occur. Don't suppose you want to hold off on killing it, give me time to get a handle on the bloody translation?"  
  
"People are dying," she reminded him.  
  
People are dying, Spike repeated silently. It sounded like a buffet. Poor humanity, to be seen only as cattle for the demon underworld. Even cobalt blue wasps wanted to munch on them. Buffy was watching him with hopeless expectancy. Good thing the Scoobies didn't know she was here. They would sweep down with their collective ire and chop off his head.  
  
"I'm an idiot," Spike exclaimed, pawing through the piles of books on the bed. He opened one and flipped through the pages. "The consciousness of the Host doesn't lie with the Queen. It's a collective. The mind, the life energy, is generated by the swarm. You have to destroy the individual members of the Host."  
  
Buffy sat up, trying not to look impressed. "How do you know that?"  
  
Spike brandished the book. "Watcher diary from Turkey, 1933. Blue wasps swarmed a town."  
  
Maybe choosing Spike as a Watcher hadn't been such a lame idea after all, Buffy thought. "How did they kill it?"  
  
"They didn't. Everybody in the village died."  
  
Buffy fell back in her chair. "Fuck."  
  
"Calm down. I'm not done yet." Spike thumbed through another volume looking oddly intent and Giles-like. "One was destroyed in Macedonia, 1856. A mage opened a portal back to the Sgubykci home dimension. But a rift can only be opened wide enough to transport about 500 of the collective then it closes down. A wider portal than that and we risk damaging the integrity of our dimensional walls. How many wasps are we talking about, Slayer?"  
  
"Thousands," Buffy grimaced.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
"I vote for flamethrowers," Xander said, selecting a piece of pepperoni pizza from the coffee table. Pizza and mass destruction at Casa Summers. It was just like old times.  
  
I vote for a spell that turns all the locusts into little burnt crisps done by someone who isn't me, Willow thought darkly. The place where the magic had been in her head was hollow. Inside she seethed at her own powerlessness. On the couch Willow curled into a ball next to Xander and tried to concentrate on what her friends were saying.  
  
"Spike said we could summon a Namiag demon. It would consume the Host, but it would probably go on and destroy the town while it was at it. That's what happened in Bolivia," Buffy said with a sigh. She wanted a nice vampire to fight, something she could kick and stab at.  
  
"Did Spike have any other helpful information?" Xander asked sarcastically. What had happed to being a Watcher in name only? Xander knew now was not the time for that question. But, barring eminent death, that time was going to come soon. Of course, eminent death was always a real possibility.  
  
"Whatever we do, we should do it before the eggs hatch," Anya interjected. "Obviously the men are intended to be food when the little buggers emerge. Once they've fed they'll probably join the rest of the swarm."  
  
"Gross," Dawn said from where she sat cross-legged on the floor next to her sister's chair.  
  
"We need to do something before that," Buffy insisted.  
  
"That may be enough," Willow said thoughtfully. Insects have a remarkably short lifecycle. If we can prevent the new generation from being born the swarm may die out on its own."  
  
"Cool," Dawn grinned. Finally she was going to see some action. "So what do we do?"  
  
"You stay home and do your homework for once," Buffy said.  
  
"School hasn't even started yet, Buffy. Way to stay in touch with reality."  
  
"Then you get to stay home and watch movies with Clem," Buffy amended patiently.  
  
Because her sister always had to have a demon baby sitter? Buffy wasn't sure Clem could provide more than pleasant company. At least Spike could protect her, and Dawn had no business on a mission like this until she could protect herself.  
  
Dawn looked crushed, but Buffy was immune to teenage pouting. "We finish this tonight," she said.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
"Hello, Joyce," Spike said to the headstone. He placed the bouquet of white roses in front of the marble slab. "Flowers are a bit nicer this time. Give a body a bit of income and he starts to feel all posh."  
  
He paused to light a cigarette and watch a lone insect float by on pale blue wings. Should he be out helping Buffy? No. Of course not. If she needed his help she would have asked.  
  
"I just wanted to tell you that I'm real sorry, about what I did to Buffy." Spike shook his head. "I don't know why I think you can hear me, except that I seem to spend all my bloody time talking to dead people these days. It's good that the Bit didn't raise you. The dead deserve their peace. They don't need to be popping up and asking favors and bobbing their heads like bloody jaybirds." Spike trailed off, wondering if Tara could hear him. He could not see her among the gravestones, but ghosts didn't need to be seen if they didn't have a mind to.  
  
Spike stood silently before the grave watching the smoke from his cigarette dissipate into the darkness.  
  
"I come here sometimes too," Dawn said behind him.  
  
Good kid, Spike thought. He hadn't heard her coming until the last second. Walking forward she kissed the tips of her fingers and touched them to the headstone. Then Dawn turned an accusing look at Spike.  
  
Ah, so she knows then. Spike hardened himself for whatever it was Dawn was going to say. He didn't expect her to hit him. It was more of a slap really, but she was trying. The sound of her palm striking his cheek was loud in the calm night air.  
  
"Did that hurt?" she demanded.  
  
Spike took a drag off his cigarette and exhaled thorough his nose like a dragon. "Nope," he said honestly. Dawn's eyes filled with tears. Shit. More bloody crying.  
  
"I can't believe you left me," Dawn sniffled.  
  
Spike smiled heartlessly. Shouldn't she be angry about what he did to Buffy? He decided the solipsism of youth was almost as great as the selfishness of the undead. Gently he wiped away the first tear, hoping no more would follow. Dawn shivered at the coldness of his hand.  
  
"I didn't leave you, Niblet. There were things I had to do."  
  
"The soul. Willow told me." Dawn looked up at him like she thought she would be able to see it. But Spike looked the same as ever; beautiful and pallid, like marble in the thin moonlight.  
  
Great, Spike growled internally. The news was out. Well that's me buggered, he thought. As though my reputation wasn't shit already.  
  
"I'll make you a deal, Dawn. Let me teach you how to throw a decent punch and I'll give you another shot." It was a damn shame the Slayer's kid sister couldn't even land a respectable blow.  
  
Dawn didn't even have to consider the offer.  
  
"When do we start?" she asked eagerly, tears suddenly forgotten.  
  
Kids were so easy. He and Dru had always enjoyed feeding off the young. It was the only time their victims were almost excited for it. By the time the prey realized what was happening and started screaming it was too late. Spike dropped the cigarette and crushed it under his boot.  
  
"We start now, pet."  
  
  
  
TBC 


	8. 

"I just want to point out that I voted for flame-throwers," Xander said, shivering in the warm night air. Shivering because it was cold- for a hot August night- not because he was afraid of millions of swarming stinging mystical bees. Nope. Not him.  
  
Buffy wrinkled her forehead and stared at the warehouse. It was coated in insects, their bodies black in the night. The hum of their millions of wings vibrated the hot air.  
  
"It looks like Willow's plan worked. Most of them seem to have come home to mamma." Which meant Spike was right about the whole collective conscious thing. Damn smug vampire.  
  
"Yay plan," Xander said unenthusiastically. "I want to go in with you. And how do we even know if the bugs will hatch at midnight?"  
  
"Because everything supernatural happens at midnight," Anya shrugged. "It's tradition."  
  
"Let's get this over with," Buffy said, hefting her duffel bag. The bug bombs inside rattled together. She turned to look at Xander, "The countdown is five minutes starting now. Remember to keep all your skin covered. Just do your thing-"  
  
"And run away. I got it." He watched Buffy and Anya move hand and hand towards the warehouse, afraid of losing one another in the undulating mass.  
  
Willow was at home, with her lone bug in its Mason jar, pretending to raise a Namiag demon. She had assured them she couldn't even levitate a pencil let alone call forth some sort of demon warrior from a hell dimension. "This bug will tell all the other little flying nasties about the threat, and they should swarm to protect their Queen," Willow had reasoned.  
  
Looks like Will was right, Buffy thought. She hadn't worn the fencing mask, but now she wished she had. Every time she inhaled the wasps tried to crawl in her mouth or up her nose. The little bodies crushed up against her made her want to scream. No screaming, she ordered herself. She ripped a long piece of cloth from the bottom of her shirt and tied it around her face like a bandit.  
  
Inside the main warehouse space Buffy and Anya split up, each following the wall in the opposite direction. Buffy pulled a bug bomb out of her bag, activated it and dropped it against the wall. Why didn't I think to bring a gasmask, she wondered. Something about slaying, what with the stakes and crossbows, made her forget that helpful technology had been invented after 1059 AD.  
  
Outside Xander began to rub his head and arms with a thick white paste. No cool scarf and gauntlets for him this time, he had the privilege to wear only the finest in medieval baby food. For the first time the idea entered his head that maybe Willow had been lying to them. Maybe she wasn't better at all but had only been faking it until she had a chance to lure them into some horrible situation where she could leave them to die. That, Xander admitted as he rubbed the stinking substance into his neck, was not a happy thought.  
  
Inside, Buffy wondered how she was going to get out of the warehouse. In her head she counted (one Mississippi; two Mississippi) as she set off the smoking bombs. Insecticide began her burn her eyes and lungs. Three minutes and Anya would do her thing. Hopefully she would meet up with the demon before then. Momma bug was out there somewhere in the swarm, invisible in the shifting throng. As she set off the bombs Buffy couldn't believe the wasps were not attacking her. Spike had said since she couldn't hurt the Queen the collective would not perceive her as a threat. He was right, and what was worse, she had believed him. She had trusted him with all their lives, which was in itself a betrayal. It didn't matter if it worked this time. As soon as Buffy trusted him Spike would lie at the most improbable moment and she would be dead. And now Willow really couldn't bring her back.  
  
She and Anya met half way around the parameter of the warehouse. For a brief moment Buffy was so happy to feel the soft denim of Anya's jacket, happy to feel anything that wasn't hard and winged pressing against her body, that she almost forgot the searing pain of the poison burning her lungs and making her eyes water so hard she could barely see.  
  
"Are we ready?" Anya shouted above the thrum of wings as though they were friends at an exceptionally loud dance club. The noise was worse than the hottest, most crowded night at the Bronze.  
  
"Yes!" Buffy screamed back, hoping the demon could hear her. This was the part they had not thought through very well. Buffy wasn't sure she could get out in time. One minute thirty seconds remaining. Anya's arm disappeared from under her hand. It was time to go. Buffy stifled a coughing fit; her lungs were rebelling against the abuse. She could not even tell if the venomous gas was having any effect on the bugs. It sure as hell was having one on her. With one hand on the wall she tried to push her way through the blinding, moving throng, towards the door. Under her hand she felt the rough, uneven paneling of the warehouse and, occasionally, the sticky mass of something that used to be human.  
  
I'm sorry, Buffy thought. I'm so sorry. I don't know what else to do.  
  
Outside Xander was completely coated in the putrid substance Willow had mixed up for him. He had to wipe the stuff off the face of his watch to see the seconds tick by. As they closed in on the five-minute mark his stomach clenched. Where was Buffy? He looked up in time to see the warehouse explode in a rolling orange ball of fire and smoke. The building writhed with flames, cruel amber tongues licking the night sky, consuming the black dots vying for escape. Anya had done it then.  
  
"No!" he screamed. "Wait!"  
  
Where was Buffy? He couldn't see her in the sudden light. But there was something he was forgetting. He had a job. There was something he had to do. Where was Buffy? Had Anya gotten out in time? Was fire any danger to her now?  
  
Bending down Xander opened the rough wooden box at his feet.  
  
"Nepo Emases" he said, which seemed like too small a thing to do any good. Magic was big and complex, right? Then he felt the wind, hotter than the fire behind him, sucking all the escaping insects into the box, pulling at the small patches of skin his fingers had left exposed. Emanating from the box was a feeling, the smell of home. He wanted to climb in.  
  
"Xander! Run!" Anya shouted.  
  
He was so stupid, this man. Dragging Buffy away from the incinerated building she wondered why she had ever admired him. Well, he did have nice lips, but shouldn't there be more to it than that?  
  
Obediently Xander did run away from the box, and down towards the flames. Buffy was leaning heavily against Anya, her clothes sooty and charred.  
  
"Thank god you're both alright!" Xander said, propping up the Slayer's other side, smudging her with the pungent mixture.  
  
"She didn't get out of the building in time," Anya said. "She had to break through the wall. It's lucky she's so strong."  
  
Buffy was pretty sure being the Slayer could not be construed as luck.  
  
"My hair was on fire. I think I'm going to have to get it cut," she complained.  
  
Hard blue bodies rushed past them, wings crumpled in the mystical hurricane emanating from the box, fast at first and then slowly. When the breeze died the three friends moved towards the wooden container but the lid closed on its own as if sated. There was nothing left to hear but the crackling roar of the fire. All around them crisp, hot bodies fell through the air like rain.  
  
________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
"Let's go for a ride," Buffy said in a hard voice that made the suggestion sound more like a demand. It was four o'clock in the morning the same night of the mass extermination. After three showers her hair still smelled like smoke and insecticide.  
  
Spike looked up from the piles of yellow paper he was arranging on the surface of a tomb. Buffy was probably here to stake him for keeping the Bit out all night, or for having seen Dawn at all.  
  
"Someone has to teach the kid to fight," he said defensively, even though he had promised himself he was not going to argue with her. Mass murderers and attempted rapists don't get visitation rights, Spike reminded himself.  
  
Buffy fixed him with one of her patented looks of disdain.  
  
"The Desoto. Now," she said.  
  
Buffy didn't want to take the motorcycle, which would require her to hold onto him for balance, press her knees against the outside of his cold thighs. Way too much personal contact, no thank you. Spike looked momentarily uncertain, then he shrugged and snagged his keys off the television.  
  
"Anyplace in particular?" Spike asked, pulling out of the cemetery. The windows of the old car were rolled down and the hot wind blew Buffy's hair in her face. She raked it back with her fingers. All she wanted was to go someplace safe, preferably far far away.  
  
"Someplace without headstones," she called above the rushing air. "Someplace pretty." No more corrugated warehouses or crypts or ugly suburban homes. Spike nodded, reached to light a cigarette and then didn't.  
  
Giving up on her hair Buffy let her head fall back on the seat and trailed her fingers out the window. As the Desoto sped recklessly through empty back roads Buffy realized where they were going. That would do just fine. She wanted to close her eyes and fall asleep to the steady, soothing rhythm of the car. This isn't a pleasure drive, Buffy reminded herself. You're here to talk shop.  
  
"You can tell the Council the first portent has been taken care of."  
  
Spike nodded, watching the headlights of the Desoto bounce erratically as he raced down the sharp, winding road. He was determinedly not looking at Buffy, not examining her long neck stretched against car's headrest, her eyes dim and tired. No, he was going to be a good little Watcher, buy himself a bloody tweed jacket with corduroy on the elbows, drink lots of weak tea and never think of passionate sex again. Right. That was the plan. And his plans always worked out so very well.  
  
"I called the Council to let them know. It was quite a light show," he explained off her questioning look.  
  
Which was true. That was how he had known the Host was destroyed. That and Tara had shown up in his crypt clapping her hands and giggling. Giggling, Spike shuttered at the memory. He had wanted to tell her to bugger off and leave him alone. Instead he watched the 1:00 am broadcast of The Maltese Falcon with her, two cold creatures together on the couch. He suspected she was lonely.  
  
And what does William the Bloody care about a sad little ghost, Spike demanded of himself. He drove the Desoto right into the beach and slammed on the breaks, sending the car skidding and sand flying up around them. Buffy braced herself against the cracked dashboard, suddenly awake.  
  
"Is this pretty enough for you, Slayer?" Spike asked getting out of the car.  
  
It was, Buffy admitted to herself. Slamming the car door behind her she moved towards the wide, welcoming ocean. Spike followed her down towards the water, hands in his pockets.  
  
Buffy stood on the edge of the ocean, breathing in its vast beauty, the steady sound of waves breaking and hissing against the sand, the taste of salt in the air. She wondered if Spike, with his night vision could see colors in the water and rocks. They walked aimlessly down the beach until they found a silvery log washed up on the shore. Sitting down on it Buffy immediately wished she hadn't as the dew soaked through her jeans. Spike dug the toe of his beat up boot into the sand and watched the moonlight skim and reflect off the water's moving surface.  
  
Buffy was thinking about the men who had died in the fire, of all the people who she had not been able to save. Giles had told her once that she could not berate herself for doing her best. But now that she was not thinking so much of her own death Buffy found herself thinking of the deaths of others. Of Tara. What kind of hero couldn't even save her own friends? Buffy shook her head, banning the thought from her mind. That way lays madness, she told herself. Think of something else.  
  
"Tell me about the soul," Buffy demanded. In a way she felt she had some proprietary right to it. He had gotten the soul for her, hadn't he? That entitled her to know.  
  
Spike turned sharply and looked at her as though Buffy had just asked what gravity was.  
  
"Didn't you already get a handle on this issue with Angel?" he asked darkly. Buffy winced.  
  
"I want to know what it's like for you. Are you all good now? Does it hurt?" He could tell from her tone he wouldn't be disillusioning her much with the truth.  
  
"No, I'm not all good. Souls don't have as much to do with goodness as you'd like to think. Look at Willow. Some power issues, sure, but good. Good people are still capable of doing terrible things," Spike drifted off, looking at the water.  
  
He could feel the sunrise coming on. Was it that late already? What was the question of the hour? Right. The sodding soul. Should have skipped Africa and gone straight on to Russia. He could have spent the better part of a decade drunk off his ass in St. Petersburg, living off cheap vodka and drinking from the newly dead in hundreds of little hospitals. But here he was with Buffy, and she was talking to him instead of killing him like he deserved so maybe the soul was the right call after all.  
  
"With the demon there's pretty much only one thought pattern: see, want, take. And this is what vampires do. We want blood or a fancy car we take it. It's not a bad way to live. Bad for those who got in our way, but we had a ripping time."  
  
"I know this part," Buffy said. And she did know it, but listening to him talk about it disgusted her all the same. Recently she had been one of the things Spike tried to take.  
  
"With the soul.I don't think I'm going to describe it very well. The demon doesn't do a good job at seeing consequences. Or if it does see them, it doesn't care. Kill a person and what happens? Her friends grieve? I mean, who gives a flying fuck if some humans you've never met are sad? Well the soul cares, at least with the soul I care."  
  
"What if it's someone you love?" But Buffy knew the answer to that, right? He loved her, as much as someone like him could love, and he was perfectly capable of hurting her.  
  
Spike looked towards the east. If she killed him it wouldn't be a bad way to go.  
  
"I cared about Dawn, Buffy. I wanted to protect her, but without the chip she would have been dinner by now. No matter how much I loved her she still smelled like food. He life had no weight." He ignored her violent look and went on. "Willow now, I never gave a rat's ass if the witch lived or died. Yet here I am, dragging her to the hospital, cooking her pancakes."  
  
"You made breakfast?"  
  
"It was for dinner. The point is her life has value to me now. The soul doesn't make me good it simply makes me aware of her value. I can still choose to ignore it. And no, it doesn't hurt."  
  
"Too bad," Buffy growled. At least there was that question answered. But why did she care? Was it a know thy enemy kind of curiosity? Or more of an Angel was good with a soul maybe Spike is too kind of thought.  
  
"You're hair's darker," Buffy blurted out. Way to make with the stupid comments. What's with that soul? Hey! You're hair changed color! They weren't really on the same scale of importance.  
  
Spike winced and ran his fingers uncertainly through his curling hair. It was still blond, just darker, more natural.  
  
"Willow's idea. She said I was living in the eighties." Spike lit a cigarette and exhaled away from Buffy.  
  
"You must really like her if you let her mess with your image." Buffy was still tense over what he said about Dawn. In her own ears she sounded bitter, although she had been going for disinterested.  
  
"I guess I must," he agreed, smiling widely. For an instant Spike looked so young and, shit, Buffy thought, so alive it took her breath away. She hadn't been prepared for that.  
  
Then the smile was gone and he was just Spike again, distant and foreign and ageless. Buffy wanted to make him smile again, just so she could see that flash of humanity. The last time she had seen him look so vulnerable was.it was when he came into the bathroom that night. His face had been so open and naked before he lost control. Buffy turned her face away from the water because she couldn't stand to look at him. Disgusting monster. How could she have brought him back here?  
  
Spike didn't notice Buffy's shifting mood. He was distracted by the pull of the sun.  
  
"Buffy, look." He pointed over her shoulder and she turned. The sun was beginning to peak over the horizon. She could make out hints of color in the grass beyond the sand.  
  
"It's been over a hundred years since I've seen a sunrise," Spike said, craning his neck as though to get a better view.  
  
"Spike! Get inside!" Inside where? Buffy wondered. It was sickening, but she realized she didn't want him to die. How annoying and like him to commit suicide after she had so calmly not killed him. Buffy lurched to her feet determined to drag him up the beach to the Desoto. He stepped back from her and held out a warning hand.  
  
"Wait," Spike said.  
  
Buffy glared and tried to decide if she could manhandle him to the car in time. Probably not. Fine then, incinerate yourself. Tucking her hands under her arms for warmth, Buffy turned towards the east. The sun slid slowly into the sky, pushing the soft shadows back until she and Spike stood washed in the hard, early morning sunlight.  
  
Well fuck me, Spike thought. It worked.  
  
"Why aren't you in flames?" Buffy demanded angrily. She felt like she had been tricked into betraying something she wanted to keep secret.  
  
"It's a present," Spike said, lightly touching his chest where his heart was not beating. "Something a friend gave me."  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
The End  
  
  
  
Well maybe the end.  
  
  
  
  
  
In theory, this is the first installment in my little apocalyptic series. (Careful readers will correctly assume that the next story will deal with the prophesized massacre and so on and so forth until the world ends, or Buffy prevents the world from ending.) So for those who are interested, the story will continue once I am finished with the annoying process of editing Part II. Until that point I hope this works as a stand-alone. 


	9. 

World's Edge  
  
Part Two: The Massacre  
  
  
  
Spike thought his strange relationship with Willow was at an end (no matter what Tara's annoying apparition said) now that she was back home with Buffy. The witch didn't call, didn't write, end of story. Meaning for the first time in months his un-life was free of her tear filled sniveling face. My immortality is looking up, he decided, tromping home one night through the wet grass of the cemetery. Now if Clem would only bugger off. It had been nice of the genial demon to look after the crypt while he was out of town, but Spike didn't fancy a roommate now that he was home.  
  
Walking through the door he was stopped short by the sight of Willow comfortably lounging on the couch with Clem. The witch and the demon were grinning at one another and debating the relative merits of baked potato chips. It's like the bloody Hilton in here, Spike thought, frowning at them.  
  
Seeing Spike, Willow nervously cleared her throat. With her black lacy dress and heavy eyeliner, she looked witchier now than she ever had while playing with dark magic. "So, you want to get a drink?" she asked hopefully.  
  
Actually, he didn't. At all, he decided, glairing at the two of them. Clem smiled and waved a greeting, but Willow shrank back from the animosity in his expression. Spike felt a small thrill of delight when he realized he was frightening her, followed by a startling aftershock of guilt.  
  
"A drink. Sure," he said. Bugger it all.  
  
One sodding drink at the Bronze, that was all it took. Now Spike couldn't get the damn witch to go away. Like the clap, he thought callously.  
  
"Tell me a story," Willow said one afternoon as they sat together on his couch looking at the blank TV.  
  
Tilting his head Spike tried to think of something appropriate.  
  
"One of the first kills Dru and I made together was a family, poor but clean, and young. Very tasty. I didn't know back then that not every kill was going to be as sweet. When we were done with dinner we strung them up with rope, the bodies, and had ourselves a little Punch and Judy show."  
  
Spike only told Willow the light stories, the ones he thought she could handle. He didn't tell her about cutting up Cecily's pretty face and raping her with Angelus before drinking her dry. It was always Angelus, not Dru or Darla, who showed him the most brutal games. In return Willow had described her night of vengeance: how Warren's steaming stench heated the night air, the flush of satisfaction she felt sucking Rack's worthless life out of his body.  
  
Leaning her head against Spike's shoulder, Willow was happy to listen to his wicked tales because if he were talking she wouldn't be thinking and remembering. Besides, the things Spike had done made killing Warren and Rack look like picking daises.  
  
  
  
"Keep going," Willow mumbled into his shirt. Absently, Spike stroked her hair like he used to with Drusilla when she would get upset, which was often.  
  
"Drusilla had a thing for babies, liked her prey small and juicy. I went for them a bit older, and strong. I wanted my victims to put up a good fight. Nobody took notice of me when I was alive; I was going to make bloody well sure I had everybody's attention now. Drove Angelus out of his mind I can tell you."  
  
"Sometimes I wonder if Tara would ever have forgiven me," Willow said apropos of nothing.  
  
Sitting there with his arm around Willow, hand resting on the crown of her head, Spike didn't respond. He was painfully aware that the smell of Willow's skin, the feeling of her warm, living body pressed against his, was turning him on. Natural enough urge, he reasoned, and he hadn't had a shag for ages. The last person he'd slept with was Buffy and that felt like it was in another life. In a way it was another life.  
  
He wasn't Angel; having the soul didn't make him a bloody eunuch. Not that Willow would be into him anyway, lesbian and all that. Even if she was, Tara was already causing him enough grief in her unrest, and Buffy wouldn't like it. Of course Buffy wasn't going to like anything he did, but there was no point in going out of his way to piss her off. So no Willow, he told himself. Get over it. Be good. Being good was getting on his last nerve.  
  
"Hey? Spike? Ground control to major Tom?" Willow was giving him her concerned look, eyes wide, and mouth small.  
  
Her face was so open and vulnerable Spike wondered why Angelus had never gone after her; she was just his type. Too bad I wasn't here for the night of Evil Willow, Spike thought, would have been quite interesting to see that. It was impossible to believe all that had stood between them and the end of the world was Xander and the story of a broken yellow crayon. Only Willow could be moved by something so insipid.  
  
"Are you listening to me?" Willow demanded.  
  
"Yes, course I'm listening. I mean, no. I wandered off for a bit, but I'm back now." Spike grimaced at his own honesty. Bloody hell. She was turning him into a fucking prat.  
  
"You're supposed to be the one person I can talk to," Willow complained.  
  
Spike's brittle silences frightened her. They reminded Willow of how he was before the soul: distant and cruel. He looked that way now, and Willow nervously remembered how much he despised it when she complained about things in London.  
  
Spike glared at the witch with something approaching hatred. He wasn't a confessional for Buffy or Willow to whisper their ugly secrets to and forget about them. You want me to play the hero, he accused Willow; you want me to fix your sad little life. Well too bad, Red. I'm not the bloke to absolve you of your sins.  
  
"Go talk to your friends," Spike said shortly, annoyed that he cared whether she was happy or not. Didn't foresee that when he asked for the fucking soul, did he?  
  
Spreading his fingers over her scull Spike turned her head like a dial until she was looking up at him. "You have to talk to them. Buffy learned that the hard way. You need to tell them what you're going through or this whole little co-dependent structure the three of you have will just collapse."  
  
Willow's open face closed down like a window with the blinds drawn.  
  
"They'll help you," Spike insisted.  
  
Xander Harris and his crayon could help her better than he could. It was the truth and he hated it. Poor Spike, old and toothless and losing the girl to some puffy ponce who dressed like a bad acid trip.  
  
Buffy watched this exchange from the door to the crypt. For a brief moment the sight of them together, Willow leaning with gross familiarity against the vampire's shoulder, made her chest constrict and she could not breath. They were so absorbed in one another they did not even hear her come in. Biting her lip Buffy tried to work out who she felt more betrayed by because, hello, cuddling with her attempted rapist? That was a major no no in the Best Friend Handbook. Then Spike smiled and all her ire rested on him. She hated it when he smiled like that. You're not a real boy, Buffy chastised him, stop looking like one. But he was telling Willow to talk to her and Xander, which almost smacked of selflessness. Not that it could be. Buffy was determined not to let Spike or his soul ruin her bad opinion of him.  
  
"Ah-hem," Buffy cleared her throat loudly. Two heads swiveled towards her. Willow jumped away from Spike looking appropriately guilty. Well, good, Buffy thought.  
  
"Excuse me, Watcher, don't you have someplace you need to be right now?" Buffy demanded. Spike squinted into the sun streaming through the door and then looked at the watch on Willow's wrist.  
  
"Right," Spike said. "That thing with the Bit."  
  
He hated walking around during the day. What if Tara took back her gift and he went poof with no warning? That would be a fucking waste. Was there a more pitiful way for a vampire to die than be killed by daylight? From the look on Buffy's face it was either sunlight or death by Slayer. Decisions, decisions.  
  
Spike picked his sunglasses up off the sepulcher and sighed. "I guess I'll be going then."  
  
"And buy a fucking clock already. Haven't you read the Watcher Diaries? You're now the poster boy for responsibility and timeliness," Buffy said. And Dawn gets all mopey when she thinks you've forgotten her. The Slayer turned towards her friend.  
  
"Hey Will, you coming with?"  
  
Willow perked up. "I'm coming."  
  
Willow said it in the same tone she used in high school when she realized Buffy was choosing her over Cordelia. It's my fault, Buffy thought. I cut her out and now she doesn't even know I want to let her back in.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
Dawn's head hit the mat with a tooth-numbing thump. The training room smelled worst from the floor: like feet and sweat and sawdust from the repairs Xander was doing to the Magic Box.  
  
"Get up," Spike ordered.  
  
Oh sure, Dawn thought. That was easy. At least it would have been if his arms weren't crossed over her throat.  
  
"Chip?" she gasped, because that defiantly hurt.  
  
"The chip won't activate unless I'm trying to bloody well hurt you. Now get up."  
  
Dawn struggled uselessly against his weight. It was a horrible idea, she thought, training with Spike. Maybe he would kill her by accident and it would all be over soon.  
  
"Not like that," Spike said, annoyance creeping into his tone. "You can't try and use brute force with somebody stronger than you are. You're not the Slayer. You don't get to fight like your sister. Use your hips. Use gravity. Make my weight work against me."  
  
Dawn strained and twisted her hips, throwing him to the side and breaking his stranglehold with her arms. Good girl, Spike thought. But by now she shouldn't have to think about a move like that. It should be instinct. Before he was on his feet she rolled out of his reach and popped up into fighting stance, or what she thought was fighting stance.  
  
"Better," Spike admitted grudgingly. "But in the real world I'd have killed you by that point. Ready to try it again?"  
  
"I think that's enough for today," Buffy said from her perch on the pommel horse. Her textbook, the one she had supposedly been trying to study from, lay open across her lap.  
  
In her mind it had made sense, at the time, to let Spike train Dawn as long as she was present. Watching him throw her sister to the floor countless times Buffy wondered if she was right. No, nothing about this was right. Buffy told herself she felt safer if she could chaperone their training sessions. It gave her a chance to work out how much faith she had in the soul, to see if Spike was really new and improved. Willow said yes, but her opinion carried less weight now that she had tried to suck them all into hell.  
  
Dawn, feeling huffy and bruised, didn't object to her training session being cut short. She had thought learning to fight would be fun, like that first night in the cemetery when Spike had corrected her form with authoritative, steady hands and demonstrated punches in the air. When he touched her she had felt a tingling mixture of fear and, well, tingling. More of that wouldn't be bad. Instead training was a whole lot of pain, and bruises, and soreness. And Buffy seemed to have about zero sympathy for how hard she was trying.  
  
"I'll go help Anya in the store," Dawn said grudgingly.  
  
Yep, four months and still her debt to society was not paid off. Buffy didn't say anything. The Slayer was staring hard at Spike who looked down at the floor. So the eternal fight fought on, Dawn thought. Whatever.  
  
"Do you want to take a shot?" Spike asked, because Buffy looked like she did.  
  
Shrugging, she closed her book. "I could go a round."  
  
Spike let the Slayer strike first. It seemed polite. Buffy slammed her fist into his face with compunction for manors. So she was angry with him then, Spike decided, because that sodding hurt. He was surprised she hadn't beaten the crap out of him sooner as punishment for assaulting her. Being a Slayer, she had the divine right of retribution on her side. There was nothing he could do to stop her from turning him into little dusty bits.  
  
Still, he could make her work for it, Spike resolved, easily blocking her next two punches. Buffy looked surprised. Did she think he was just going to take whatever she dished out? You're getting complacent with me, love, he chastised. Do you think the next portent will just sit there and let you do the samba on its ass? Suddenly Spike spun and kicked hard enough to propel the Slayer across the room.  
  
Bruised and pissed, Buffy picked herself up off the floor. She hadn't really thought he would hit her, not hard. Her mind flitted back to the alley the night Katrina died when he let her use him as her own private punching bag. Don't I have more of a right to that now? Buffy was pretty sure she did.  
  
"Come on, Slayer. You can do better than that," Spike admonished, not even having the good grace to look winded from their little tussle.  
  
"You have no idea what I can do," Buffy snapped. When had she begun this tradition of pointless repartee with her opponents, and why couldn't she stop?  
  
With mercurial speed Buffy was off the floor and on him. Fighting in a flurry of elbows and fists, they spun and parried their way around the room. This was the dance, Spike thought, settling easily into the familiar rhythm of the Slayer's anger. Too easily. Try harder, Buffy. The next Big Bad will rip out your throat if you can't even take me. Maybe she still trusted him too much? Not bloody likely.  
  
Enough of this, Spike decided. He spun and ducked out of her reach.  
  
"You're predictable when you're angry," he told her in the scornful tone he knew she hated. Irritated, she lunged. He sidestepped. "Think, Slayer. You have to be smarter, not just stronger."  
  
"Save the Watcher crap. It doesn't impress me," Buffy retorted, moving in slower this time, hands low. As they circled she watched his muscles move beneath the tight black shirt, trying to anticipate which way he would go.  
  
You wouldn't have beaten the Host without me, Spike thought. I bloody well saved your life, and your miserable bratty friends.  
  
Buffy knew what he was thinking, and expected him to say it, to gloat that she needed him. When he didn't she was surprised. Maybe the soul gave him tact? It certainly didn't make him any less rash.  
  
As she expected him to, Spike broke the circling first, aiming a high kick at her head. She ducked, slamming her elbow into his gut. That should hurt him. He backed off a little, but not as much as she expected, and grabbed her by the throat. Hadn't anticipated that, had she?  
  
"Try harder, or you're dead," Spike growled, morphing into vamp face. Snarling he lunged at her neck.  
  
Shit! Buffy thought. Was he was really going to bite her? Falling backwards, she used his momentum to throw him over her head. Somewhere behind her there was a crash. Grabbing for one of the stakes littering the training room, Buffy rolled over into a crouched position and slammed Spike back to the floor as he tried to get to his feet, the stake ready to plunge into his chest.  
  
"Better," Spike said grudgingly, his words thick around his heavy fangs, "but we should have been here a lot sooner.  
  
She could not tell if she meant this fight in particular, or them in general. You should have killed me sooner. Buffy thought that was what he meant. Spike's blue eyes were filled with an expression she could only identify as anticipation. Breaking off from his gaze she appraised the tip of the stake poised over his heart. Did Spike really want her to kill him?  
  
"Maybe we should train Dawn on distance weapons: throwing knives, crossbows. It might keep her safer, out of the main action of the fight. What do you think?" Buffy asked. Oh good, I've regained my title as the queen of the non sequitur.  
  
"Sure," Spike said, shaking off the manifestation of his demon. "Whatever you want."  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
Anya watched Xander work. Xander hammered. Willow, dressed for a funeral, clickity clacked away on her laptop, Dawn re-priced the inventory and Anya watched them all. There were no customers. This is your fault, Anya thought looking at Willow. Then she decided to say it out loud.  
  
"This is your fault, you and your bitchy magic. If you hadn't broken my store people would still be coming and paying money and my bank statement would have more zeros at the bottom," she complained.  
  
Willow looked up from her computer, startled.  
  
"Ahn, that's not fair," Xander said, putting down his hammer and stepping between them ready to do, well something. It was hard to be Action Guy when there was no clear path of action.  
  
"No. I think Anya gets to weigh in on this," Willow said. "I mean you spent a thousand years torturing and punishing people you didn't even know, right? Of course I'm so painfully interested in your feelings about how I killed the man who murdered my girlfriend. Isn't that vengeance? Shouldn't you be all happy about that? Or are you just pissed I impinged on your job description?"  
  
Sometimes, Willow thought, I have no idea what is going to come out of my mouth. I just open it and rivers flow out of nowhere.  
  
"Oh god, Will," Xander said. He could feel Action Man melt away. He had no idea how to deal with this strange new Willow.  
  
Anya sliced a hand through the air to demonstrate her impatience.  
  
"I don't care about the little man you killed, or the warlock. There were two, right? I'm talking about me! You - you threw me against walls and twisted my mind before hitting me over the head some more. Then you were in London and everything was fine, except that the insurance won't cover the damage to the shop because we don't have a policy that covers vindictive, narcissistic witches. You practically killed Giles and now you're going to bankrupt him. And now you came back and I have to look at you all the time!"  
  
There was more to say, but Anya was out of breath.  
  
Willow looked like she was going to snap something witty and defiant. Her mouth was hard and set in a way that connoted scornful anger. Then her whole face crumpled and Xander felt oddly elated. Good, she felt bad. All this weird time hanging out with Spike wasn't turning her into some coldhearted monster.  
  
"I'm sorry I destroyed the shop," Willow sniffled. "And I am sorry I hurt you." But how many of your victims did you apologize to, Willow wanted to know. Besides, Anya was a vengeance demon. It wasn't like she could have done any permanent damage.  
  
Anya quirked an eyebrow. "I do not find myself moved by your apology."  
  
Standing between them Xander realized a decision had to be made. He could go to Anya and try and talk her down some, or he could go to Willow who looked both angry and mortified behind her computer. It wasn't really much of a choice. He slid into the chair next to his best friend.  
  
"Hey," he said gently, taking her hand.  
  
"I know I did horrible things, Xander," Willow said softly. "I know I can't ever make up for them, but I can't go through each day apologizing to everyone each minute either."  
  
"Why not?" Anya demanded from behind the counter. "I think that's a good idea." Her anger was sharpened by the fact Xander took Willow's side over hers. Of course he would. Humans always stuck together. Not that she should care. And if he wanted to accuse her of summoning great swarms of blue wasps to exact vengeance on the men of Sunnydale, well Anya was determined not to care about that either.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
Willow cleared her throat. Right. "Hi everyone," she said.  
  
Dearly beloved, we are gathered her today - no, wait, that was the wrong speech. Willow had gathered everybody together at the Bronze because it was neutral territory. Well, really it was because she asked Spike to come and couldn't justify inviting him back to Buffy's house. Hi? Buffy? Can we just invite the evil demon who tried to rape you back into the house? Not really a conversation she wanted to have. Buffy seemed to be okay with her talking to Spike, even with Spike training Dawn, but Willow wasn't going to push it.  
  
The club was practically empty at six o'clock on a Thursday. With most of the lights still on, Willow was conscious of what a dump their old hangout really was. Through the grate of the catwalk she could see the stain from every drink spilled since the dawn of time, and each squished piece of gum spat onto the floor. Highly un-pretty.  
  
"So," Willow said, nervously fingering the sleeve of her dark shirt. "This is the point where I start talking."  
  
She shot a glance at Spike who raised his dark eyebrows in boredom. No, Willow thought. I don't know why I wanted you here either.  
  
"The thing is, I, uh, did some things that weren't so great to you guys - like kind of tearing down the Magic Box for one." Anya nodded emphatically. "Which is the thing I'm the least concerned with because it can be fixed. Right? It can be fixed?" Willow turned to Xander who nodded. Anya's satisfied expression darkened.  
  
"Oh. Good. Which brings us to the non-destructive more, uh, personal type of apology thing. I said some really crappy things, especially to you, Dawn."  
  
The girl perked up at the sound of her name, suddenly interested.  
  
"I really don't want you to turn back into green goo. I mean, I'm not sure if I even could have, but it was a really shitty thing to say."  
  
"It was the magic, Willow. It's not your fault," Xander said. He was so sweet, always taking her side like that, Willow thought. She hated having to flood light into Xander's blind spots.  
  
"Well, no. It was me. The magic made me strong, but it didn't make me mean or stupid. I lost control. Loosing Tara hurt me and I wanted everybody else to hurt too. I had a really bad day and almost killed everybody, Xander. There's really no great excuse for that. I can't go back and fix it, especially not now that the magic's gone, which given how my major spells go is probably a good thing."  
  
Willow could see her friends wanted her to say it was a great thing, the best thing, but she wasn't up for any massive lying yet.  
  
"I just want to tell you all how sorry I am for everything. You're all my friends and I love you and I hope you can forgive me someday. And I'm really sorry I called you Super Bitch," Willow said to Buffy who nodded seriously.  
  
"From this point on you should leave the quipping to me," Buffy agreed, smiling gently.  
  
In Buffy's mind there was a difference between forgiving the things Willow had done and forgiving Willow herself. It was the same line she had walked with Angel. Back in the land of moral ambiguity, she thought, how nice to be home.  
  
"I forgive you," Dawn said, sliding her arms around Willow's neck. "As long as you're not going to go away again."  
  
"Nope. I think I'm pretty much stuck here." Willow smiled sadly at Dawn's too obvious insecurity. It reminded her of herself.  
  
"Well I don't forgive you," Anya said. "I mean is that all it takes to get redemption these days? Are we forgiving Spike now?" she demanded with a wave of her hand at the offensive vampire.  
  
"No," Xander said turning around in his chair and staring at Spike. "He gets forgiven never. What the hell are you doing here anyway?"  
  
I'm being bored to tears listening to you wankers talk about your feelings, Spike thought. He congratulated himself on his tact for not saying this. Instead he leaned nonchalantly against the rail of the catwalk and shrugged, lacking an honest answer either for Harris or himself. 


	10. 

Lounging in the decrepit old lawn chair, her legs casually hooked over its arm, Buffy decided this was the most perfect in a series of perfect afternoons. The air was warm, but not hot, Dawn aced her first math test of the year, and no icky portents had reared their ugly heads. Life was good. Even Xander sprawled in dirty work clothes under the oak tree assumed an idyllic air, quilted as he as in equal amounts of sun and shade from the light sifting through the tree's foliage. He reminded her of a painting, or a style of painting. Momentarily, Buffy wished she had paid more attention in art class. Filigree? No, that was something else. Fauvism?  
  
"I'm bored," Xander complained from the grass. "I want some action."  
  
"You said the bugs gave you the willies," she reminded him, wondering that he didn't want to sit back and soak up the calm while it lasted.  
  
"I'm thinking the Massacre will be non bug related. Blood and mayhem I can handle. Tell me, when does the Evil That Stalks the Night think this thing will happen?" Thus breaking his resolution to not bring the vampire up again. Ever. Only we masochists can take root and grow into happy flowering shrubs here on the Hellmouth, Xander decided.  
  
"Spike doesn't know. Suturanin demons don't follow the same rules of temporal time as we do, so he's having trouble with the calculations."  
  
"Or so he says." Xander squinted up at her. It didn't take a prophecy for Buffy to see where this was going.  
  
"So says Willow," she countered. I see your vampire and raise you a best friend, she thought. Buffy was betting he wasn't going to argue against the sacredness of Willow.  
  
"Willow," Xander began in an argue-y tone. Oops, wrong call. Apparently he was going to argue against Will.  
  
"Hey! Willow!" Xander exclaimed jovially, suddenly noticing their friend walking towards them from the house. "Pull up some grass. We're talking about the portent that isn't."  
  
"Hi," Willow said, smiling at Xander on the lawn, Buffy in her chair, and Tara sitting cross-legged under the oak tree, hands folded in her lap. I'm going insane, Willow thought. Then Willow's Insane Vision of Tara gave a shy smile and Willow decided maybe madness wasn't so bad.  
  
While Willow stared dreamily at the oak tree, Xander and Buffy exchanged the latest and greatest in a long line of concerned looks. If there was ever a concerned look Olympics Buffy was positive she and Xander were good for gold.  
  
Once Buffy had almost called Spike to see how he dealt with Willow in London, but as she dialed she realized her comfort level with the morally ambiguous undead, while too high for Xander to handle, was just not that high. Sometimes she thought talking to Spike might be easier than talking to Willow. Her best friend's face used to be open and readable, but that was years ago. Even Willow's gothic make-up and moody ensembles upset the Slayer; Buffy missed the patterned, tacky clothes of Willow's past.  
  
Oblivious to her worried friends Willow was still gazing at Tara, noticing all the little details she had forgotten over the past few months: the way Tara's eyebrows feathered at the edges, how she smiled a little even when she was worried. I wish you were real, she thought at Figment of Willow's Imagination Tara. I wish you could forgive me.  
  
Tara clasped her hands together nervously, as though not sure what to do. "I do forgive you," she said at last in her low, careful voice.  
  
Willow's heart leapt painfully. This was all in her head and putting words she wanted to hear into Tara's mouth was deranged. Tara, living, breathing, not dead Tara would never have forgiven her. But the Tara under the tree was nodding, as though encouraging her to believe.  
  
"Willow?" Xander asked his friend, who was still staring distantly in the direction of the oak.  
  
He wanted to ask what was so cool with the tree, but he couldn't do that because it would be - gasp - personal. Perish that thought. Out on the bluff, with little mystical green flakes of anger exploding around him, it had been easy to babble his heart out to Willow. Now, in the naked light of normal life he couldn't find the perfect words to unlock all her new mysteries. Say something banal, he ordered himself.  
  
"Do you want to weigh in on the whole end of the world question?" he asked, because what could be more banal than the apocalypse that cometh?  
  
"Portent! Right," Willow jerked herself back into the land of the living. "I, uh, was thinking I should be able to write a program to translate the Ratsgninrom manuscripts. It'll be kind of hard but, you know, doable."  
  
"That's our little computer wiz," Xander said, happy that Willow seemed to have un-tranced. "See? Who needs Spike?"  
  
"Pick a new tune Xander," Buffy groaned. Not that Spike's return to Sunnydale was infusing her life with joy, but she was pretty sure that, on some level, Willow needed Spike. Someday she might even get up the nerve to ask her friend why.  
  
"But this song's so pretty," Xander countered. "It's my favorite. Besides someone has to keep shoving quarters into the jukebox of sanity."  
  
Leaning her head against the back of her chair, Buffy laughed loudly in the quiet summer afternoon. There was no way that even the quipy mind of a Slayer could respond seriously to that little run-on analogy.  
  
"Oh, Spike's all right. You just have to get used to him," Willow said, beaming widely at the tree where Tara, looking warm and alive, was blowing her a kiss.  
  
Xander had a brief mental debate. Defending Spike was bad, but responding when other people spoke was good. She even looked happy beneath all that industrial grade mascara. From the ground he grinned wildly at Buffy. Look at me, he wanted to say. I made Willow smile!  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
They moved into town quietly. It was not hard to go unnoticed in Sunnydale. When people saw something strange they simply turned their faces away and forgot about it. The interlopers questioned among themselves whether it was the nature of humanity to ignore that which it could not accept? Or was it simply the Hellmouth emitting some sort of energy or pheromone to induce the residence into a state of amnesic pliability?  
  
Not that they cared. As long as things were working in their favor there was no need to question it. And when things stopped working for them? Well, then it was time to leave.  
  
"No, no," she said, leading them down through the tunnels. It frightened them when she spoke like this, as though she heard every word that had ever passed their lips. "We've come home," she smiled. "We're never leaving again.  
  
It was dark in the passageway, but their sharp eyes could still make out the white of her hands moth-like and inquisitive in the air as she lead them farther down. At each intersection she paused and sniffed before slowly turning and choosing her path. Nobody questioned her. Some had, once, but the dead were best forgotten. Life was, after all for the living, or for those who moved with a simulacrum of life.  
  
Finally she led them to a large chamber with a throne and a pool of water. There were torches and bones but nothing smelled fresh.  
  
"It was a sanctuary," someone observed.  
  
"It was a church," she corrected. "Then it was a prison. Now it is happy because we are making it a home."  
  
"How did you know it was here, Mistress?"  
  
She covered her eyes with her long fingers. "I saw it in a dream," she whispered.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
"I'm trying to save the world. I don't have time to analyze the allegorical elements of the Lady of Shallot. I hate poetry," Buffy griped to Willow.  
  
It was two months since Willow pulled her dazed and confused routine on the lawn. At this point the Slayer decided the only normal thing about Willow was that they had gotten used to her weirdness. Not that normalcy had ever been the big with them. Stalking though cemeteries looking for vampires and talking about school? Not high on the list of norm.  
  
After she did her usual sweeps, they were supposed to meet up with Dawn and Spike at his cemetery. Letting Dawn patrol with Spike. When had she had time for the lobotomy? Dawn did deserve some sort of reward for training so hard, Buffy would cop to that, but did it have to be quality time with a murderer? Was this really the latest and greatest idea of positive reinforcement?  
  
"Victorian Poetry is not the class for you. Why did you sign up for it?" Willow asked. Dressed for slaying in jeans and a maroon jacket she looked more like "normal" Willow, the Willow that Buffy remembered.  
  
Buffy tried to haul her mind back to the topic at hand. She was thinking about Spike and they were talking about school.  
  
"I needed a lit credit and thought, well, poems are like little books. Tiny books. Books so small I can read them before I have to go out for slaying. Plus - rhyming. I mean it's got to be easy. Who can take anything seriously when it rhymes?"  
  
Willow tried not to roll her eyes. Buffy was incredibly smart, why did she insist on playing dumb so often?  
  
"I take it the Victorians were serious rhymers?" Willow said, playing along.  
  
"Mucho serious. I'd like to kick one of those stupid Victorians in the head," Buffy complained. Then she realized that wasn't an unobtainable goal. With hard work and perseverance she might be able to convince herself that Spike was the evil responsible for 19th century literature. Or not.  
  
"We have a Victorian," Willow ventured, following her friend's line of thought.  
  
"Yeah, well. I haven't kicked him so far. It's a little late to start."  
  
Technically, Buffy supposed, she had plenty of opportunities to kick Spike's ass when they trained, but she got her share of bruises too so it hardly counted.  
  
"I'll kill him for you," Willow offered, hoping her friend wouldn't take her up on it. "I am prepared to go back to hating him if you want me to. I bet he wouldn't expect it if I threw a balloon of holy water at him-or-or shoved him into sunlight. Which probably would have been more flamie before he had the soul."  
  
"Yeah. That thing. I thought I had a handle on the whole vampire with soul issue - it's not like I don't have experience on the subject. I am the experience girl. Unfortunately prior knowledge isn't helping so much. With Angel I looked into his eyes and I knew, I just knew he wasn't Angelus anymore."  
  
"Not so much with Spike?"  
  
Buffy shook her head. "I keep making lists. I mean he's translating that annoying prophecy, so plus, right? He took care of you in London. Bueno again. Still, what if it's all an act? Looking after you, the Watcher goodness, is just some standard Spike trick?"  
  
"The classic Spike flavor was not known for its patience," Willow observed, toying with the stake she was carrying. She was going to feel really stupid if Spike morphed into the Big Bad again.  
  
"Maybe that's what the demon gave him in Africa. Not a soul, just patience. Patience and light. Isn't that a Christmas song?"  
  
"You're asking the Jewish girl, why?"  
  
Buffy shrugged and laughed, glancing around for any re-souled vampires who might be lurking. She was going to be uncharacteristically honest and did not need him over hearing.  
  
"I think the problem is I don't really want to kill Spike version 2.0. He's not un-helpful, he's good with Dawn, he doesn't creep around outside my window and tell me how cool the universe is with me in it." Buffy paused and decided to go on with the one hundred proof honesty. "In some ways I miss the creep factor. I was more comfortable with the creep factor. I knew how to handle it."  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
"Vampires 101, Niblet, the wood has to go through the heart," Spike said, leaning nonchalantly against a headstone.  
  
Dawn re-loaded the crossbow and fired, hitting the attacking vampire in the stomach. Dawn's other attempts were sticking out of his arm, shoulder, and thigh like giant porcupine quills.  
  
"Shit," Dawn swore, and reached for another bolt. Good thing Buffy wasn't around to criticize her use of language.  
  
Finally thinking better of the fight, the attacking vampire began to hobble away, pulling Dawn's off target arrows painfully out of his body as he retreated. Obstinately refusing to give up she fired again, striking him in the back of the head with a sickening thump. As the vamp fell forward twitching on the ground, Dawn cringed and grabbed Spike's hand for comfort.  
  
"That's just sadistic," Spike grinned. He tried detangling his fingers, but the Bit's grip was tight.  
  
The kid was bloody awful. Somewhere between the Magic Box and the cemetery she had lost everything he and Buffy had taught her. On the ground in front of them the injured vampire flopped like a carp, bleeding and moaning loud enough to wake the dead. He really should put it out of its misery. At some point.  
  
This was the seventh vamp whose death she had bollixed up, too many for the average night of hunting on the Hellmouth.  
  
"Make it go away," Dawn complained into his shoulder.  
  
Slaying sucked, Dawn decided. Worse, she sucked at slaying. In the training room she could shoot with consistent accuracy, but out here her hands shook and her arms jerked and Spike got lots of chances to laugh at her demon shish kebabs before killing them himself.  
  
Maybe it was Spike's fault because, honestly, he was making her a little nervous. Nervous in the good light headed stomach sinking way, and nervous in the bad I hope he doesn't go all psycho and kill me way.  
  
"How's she doing?" Buffy called, moving towards them through the forest of grave markers.  
  
Then the Slayer saw her sister clutching at Spike's hand near a prostrate vampire. No! No touching the undead, Buffy ordered silently. At least Spike had the good taste to look properly horrified.  
  
"Let's just say slaying doesn't run in the family," Spike said, finally extracting his fingers from Dawn's crushing grip. "She hasn't managed a clean kill all night."  
  
Being too close to the girl, feeling her pulse against the palm of his hand, made Spike sickeningly nostalgic. Dawn was exactly the sort he used to like to play with, young and trusting and so very warm. The trouble with not feeding on live prey, aside from missing the hunt, was the cold. He was never going to have the fervid afterglow of a fresh kill, hot new blood temporarily heating his long dead body.  
  
Buffy brandished her stake and stalked over to finish off the tortured vampire. Keep your hands off my sister or I'll stake you too, she thought at Spike.  
  
"I know," he said aloud, interpreting her look.  
  
"Don't worry, Dawnie. Slaying's a bitch for the non-mystically enhanced," Willow complained, daubing her temple with the sleeve of her jacket.  
  
The wound was closing, but Spike could still smell the blood. Obviously she had not managed to duck fast enough from something. He fought a strong urge to lean over and lick the blood from her skin. Where was the soul during moments like this? Was it in hibernation?  
  
"It'll get easier," Spike told Willow in his low, comforting voice. That was the voice Buffy thought the immoral fiend reserved only for her. Another illusion shattered. Add it to the list, Slayer.  
  
Willow rolled her eyes, unimpressed by his platitude. Yeah, okay, Spike had to admit that was hardly the most profound advice he had ever come up with. Keeping Dawn from whining her way through the evening had been hard enough. Spike doubted he had enough patience to deal with Willow's masochistic dance too.  
  
"Buffy staked five vamps tonight. Six months ago I could have killed them all with a thought. Now all I'm any good for is running away."  
  
Dawn was shocked at the bitterness in Willow's voice. Did she really want to be all cruel and powerful again? Of course there had been fun bits too, with the magic. When Buffy was dead Willow used to magically finish all Dawn's homework so they could go party at the Bronze on school nights. Life sans Buffy had been more fun, actually, aside from the sadness and the missing her. That part had sucked.  
  
Buffy kicked vampire dust off her new red boots, forever more to be known as her scuffed red boots, and turned back to her friends. Dawn looked trapped between Willow's wall of anger and Spike's Spike-ness. Walking back Buffy took her sister's hand with preternatural strength and drew her away.  
  
While Willow was morosely staring out into the cemetery Buffy shot Spike a look meaning 'Is she okay?' Over their friend's head Spike shook his head 'No.' The Slayer resented the ease of these silent communications between them. On the other hand, Spike did win points for looking concerned. Well, the soul won points. Buffy wasn't ready to let Spike win anything.  
  
The scourge of Europe fell in step beside Willow, and they strolled along behind the Slayer and her sister. Dawn, mortified by her failure, strode ahead of the group, leaving Buffy to linger in the middle, attempting to overhear Spike and Willow's conversation without looking like she was eavesdropping.  
  
"What's the hardest part?" Spike sounded genuinely curious. "Is it that you miss the power? You want Tara back? Guilt? Help me out with this one, Red."  
  
Bastard, Buffy thought. Part of her missed him when he was like this, the kind voice, the gentle tilt of his head. Don't think about this, she ordered herself. Do not ponder why you were attracted to an amoral monster. Listen to what Willow's saying. Stop wondering why she isn't saying it to you.  
  
Willow shrugged and peered out into the dark graveyard looking for Tara. She had seen the specter a couple of times in the distance, but could not get close enough to talk to it again. Even her imagination was against her.  
  
"Not really in the mood for a heart to heart, thanks anyway," she told Spike.  
  
Immediately the vampire's tepid warmth iced over, his expression becoming distant and hostile. Behind his smooth façade, Spike longed to rip the witch's head off and have a well deserved drink. What happened to all her boo-hoo, you're the only one I can talk to crap? Well here he was, nauseated by his own concern for the selfish little bint and all ready to listen. Too late for her to tell him to sod off now.  
  
"Maybe the hardest thing is being so useless, without the magic I mean," Spike hypothesized with mocking cruelty. "For one thing you're such a bloody idiot. Before you were all cozy with the dark magic everybody thought you were dead weight. I've got sharp ears. Heard the Scoobies bitching about it all the time."  
  
"Cute with the reverse psychology, very subtle," Willow congratulated in a small voice.  
  
"If you answer the question I'll shut up and put us both out of our misery," Spike offered coldly. Willow still didn't look at him, but she slid her arm through his, her fuzzy jacket tickling the inside of his bare elbow. Why was everybody touching him tonight? Keep your sodding hands off the Big Bad, he thought. Still, he didn't pull away.  
  
"I think the hardest thing is just to live," Willow said suddenly. "You go through the day thinking of school and trying not to remember the badness and the smell and your mind gets stuck in those little places where you wonder how they get neon in the tubes or what the hell is up with the electoral college - I mean was that really the best voting system they could come up with - because those are safe little thoughts compared with other not so safe thoughts I could be having."  
  
Next to her Spike suddenly vamped out.  
  
"Do you still want me to kill you?"  
  
Buffy would know by the sound of his voice thick through his fangs. Her back was tense and listening. The witch may have been too distracted to notice, but Spike saw everything about the Slayer. He wanted her to know what was happening with Willow, hoped Buffy would do something so he would not have to.  
  
Willow turned and looked up into his demonic, yellow eyes. Was he making her an offer? Was it still tempting? She remembered meeting herself as a vampire. It was a toss up whether she was ready to be all skanky and leather just to stop missing Tara. "I forgive you," her vision of Tara had said. She would not forgive Willow for becoming a demon.  
  
"No," she decided, sounding unhappy but certain.  
  
"Well then, that's an improvement," Spike said, squeezing her arm against his side. His face rippled back into a mask of humanity smiling brilliantly down at her. For a moment Willow felt she had made the right choice. 


	11. 

Buffy followed the sound of splashing water through the crypt, down the wooden ladder, and into the tunnels. It sounded like someone talking a bath.  
  
Oh. It was a bath, Buffy realized. Spike in the bath making splashy bath sounds. The mind of a Slayer was like a steel trap. Who else would be bathing down here below the crypt? Well, Clem, maybe. Now that was a sight she could live without. Would all of his extra skin float? Was his penis as baggy and wrinkly as the rest of him? Bad thought, Buffy chided herself. Go wash your mind out with soap.  
  
Happily, Spike was almost completely obscured by the huge, antique copper tub he was soaking in. Moving closer she saw he was reading with his right arm resting along the lip of the bathtub, left hand flicking ash from his cigarette onto the floor. Glancing up absently he saw her and promptly dropped the book into the water.  
  
Buffy laughed, the light sound echoing in the tunnel. Spike didn't look so amused.  
  
"Bloody hell," he complained. It was not clear if he was referring to her presence or the drowning book. "Well it's ruined now," he said, holding the sopping pile of bound pages up for inspection.  
  
"Was it any good?" she asked, meaning the book.  
  
"It was Willow's," he said, dropping the paperback unceremoniously onto the floor. He doubted that Buffy wanted to have an extended discussion on Flaubert. Since the morning he didn't burst into flames on the beach she hadn't wanted to talk about much of anything. With an emotion he could recognize as panic he wondered what had changed that made her seek him out now. Had she come to kill him in the bath?  
  
It was obvious to Buffy that her proximity was making him nervous. Spike's eyes were wide and he sat up too straight, like a child in the principal's office. Good, she thought. Let him sweat. She came here for a reason and was determined to get it over with even if he didn't have to good taste to be clothed at that moment. Feigning nonchalance she sat on the curved rim of the tub, her back towards his feet and various other body parts she didn't want to contemplate.  
  
"I think I want to thank you for being so good to Willow since -" since she became a murderer like you, Buffy thought. "Since you came back from Africa. You've helped her a lot and you didn't have to."  
  
Oh but I did have to, Spike thought bitterly, or I'd have one little pissed off ghost on my hands. Not that Tara had twisted his arm in the cave, although in a larger sense he supposed it could have been considered bribery. Wait, had Buffy just conceded something about the soul? Highly unfair of her to talk to him when the smell of her skin was making it so hard for him to think.  
  
"Willow's not bad," he admitted. Months of monosyllabic conversation had not prepared him for this sudden camaraderie. Behind implacable blue eyes he scrambled to shift gears.  
  
"Did she really want you to turn her?"  
  
Spike's cheeks hollowed as he took a slow drag off his cigarette, feeling the smoke churn in his useless lungs. Then he exhaled in a long blue stream, watching the cloud twist and fight with itself as it drifted through the air. At some point, of course, he would have to reply. He wanted to tell her the truth, and he knew what prompted that stupid idea. "Red was having a bit of trouble in London. It's done her good to be home," he said with awkward diplomacy.  
  
"Has it? I feel like I should be doing more for her," Buffy said, which was something she hadn't even admitted to Xander or Dawn. "I'm the Slayer. I have the power to save the world. Why can't I protect my friends?  
  
Because autonomy's a bitch, Spike thought, but he could hardly say that. Instead he said, "How do you think we felt when you came back?"  
  
Okay, ouch, Buffy thought. But that had been different. She had been jerked out of heaven, which she still tried not to think about too much because sometimes having the torrential pain of the world thrown into sharp relief by the memory of eternal bliss was not such a good thing. It was the sort of thing where, if she thought about it too much, she wanted to slit her writs and make all the pain go away again. Which was what Willow had done. Tried to do.  
  
Think of something, anything else, she ordered herself, absently dipping her fingers into the water. "This is fucking freezing," she observed.  
  
"Cold doesn't bother me," he answered cautiously. What was she playing at, he wondered. Flirty Buffy seemed more like a portent for the end of the world than some paltry swarm of blue bees. You've had your fun, sweetheart, he told her mentally. Now go away and let me jack off.  
  
Buffy shook the water off her fingers, suddenly distracted by something on his chest. "What is that?" she demanded, tapping him precisely over the heart.  
  
Spike flicked his cigarette butt across the tunnel and watched it burn itself out. He didn't need to look down and see what she was talking about. Over his heart were two precise imprints where Tara had touched him, the whorls and ridges of her fingertips impressed into his chest like it was wax.  
  
"That's a gift from a friend."  
  
"Some sort of S&M thing?" Buffy demanded.  
  
Did that sound jealous? Because she was so not jealous. Wrinkling her nose, Buffy tried to work out what was pissing her off. She concluded it was about justice. It wasn't fair that she had been horny and alone for months while he was off possibly, probably, screwing everything that moved in London. Where was it in the Slayer Handbook that she couldn't have a rollicking sex life? Of course it's easy for the evil undead to get laid, she sniffed; they have no standards.  
  
Spike gave her a sad smirk. Poor little Slayer, he thought. She was hell in bed - he would give her that - but she had no concept of the things he had done, or her sacred Angelus either. Why had he gone and fallen in love with a small town girl? He tied her down and she thought she was being avant- garde.  
  
"Nothing quite so fun. It came with the whole sunlight package," he reassured her.  
  
Buffy wondered if the scar would heal, and if so, would he be relegated back to darkness again? She had tried asking him about the present when they drove back to Sunnydale in the Desoto, sunlight streaming through the open windows making his hair glow. Shit he's pale, she had thought.  
  
Behind the wheel Spike just shook his head in bemusement, as though waiting to wake up. Buffy could tell he wasn't going to volunteer any information now either.  
  
She picked up the bar of soap out of the tray and gave it an experimental sniff. Surprisingly it had a pleasant, familiar sent. Thinking of her expensive rows of shampoo and conditioner at home she wondered why it was beauty for women and merely hygiene for men?  
  
"Do you really wash your hair with this?" Buffy asked, flourishing the bar of soap.  
  
"Yeah," he answered in a tone that clearly meant 'why.'  
  
With a malicious grin Buffy began to lather his hair, amusing herself by massaging it into foamy little peaks and waves. Spike closed his eyes for a moment and then trembled, as though trying to stop himself from running away. He decided the evil, vindictive, control freak facet of her personality was probably enjoying watching him squirm.  
  
"There've been too many vamps out the past few nights. I'm thinking something portenty perhaps?" Buffy asked, trying to shape his hair into little devil's horns. Way to discourage your stalker, Buffy chastised herself. Then again, she wasn't thinking about heaven anymore, and not contemplating suicide was always a good thing.  
  
It occurred to her this was the first time she had touched him since he returned. Well, there was a fair amount of contact in their sparing matches, but any sexual tension between them when they fought was gone. Their training sessions were about as sexy as having teeth pulled: all business and no pleasure. That was what really made her believe in the soul.  
  
"Vamps could have something to do with the Massacre," he conceded, doing his best to ignore her, and of course failing like he failed at everything. Her hot hands stroking his skin filled his dark corners with frustrated desire. Don't look at her, he ordered himself, don't touch, don't smell. Concentrate on work. "Haven't seen anything in the manuscripts about vampires, but that doesn't mean much. Willow and I are fairly bogged down in the translation. Stupid Suturanin language has too many variables. The same word can mean birth, or death, or life, or tree. I think we'd be better off with a bloody magic eight ball."  
  
"I need the information sooner rather than later."  
  
"I'm trying," he said with a calmness he didn't feel. I'm not going to send you marching to your death. Didn't much like the way it felt the last time.  
  
Spike kept his eyes trained on his long, alabaster toes, which gave Buffy plenty of time to examine him without being watched in return. Sitting before her like that, ridged, and scared, but proud, she allowed herself to admit he was beautiful. Doubtless that was why Drusilla had picked him in the first place. And Angel picked Dru. Now was not the best time to think about that family tree. Absolutely never was probably the best time for that.  
  
"You're not going to go all stalker boy on me now, are you?" Buffy demanded, combing his hair up into a foamy Mohawk. He used to take being knocked into walls as encouragement. Her taunting him could only lead his mind to dark places.  
  
"No," he said evenly.  
  
Mentally he added, I promise to match your weirdness. Since he had returned Buffy had been too calm. Now he thought he saw her anger coming out in small, cruel ways. This must be how she is going to get back at me, he thought. Tease me to death.  
  
Tilting his head back Buffy covered his eyes with one hand, feeling his eyelashes brush her palm. With her free hand, the one not protecting the vampire from the terrible fate of soapy eyes, she found the tumbler of water on the floor and poured its contents through his hair. Her mother used to bath her and Dawn like this when they were children.  
  
Spike grimaced. "That was vodka, Buffy."  
  
Buffy laughed. Okay, maybe this was slightly different than what her mother used to do. She dipped the cup into the glacial water. "I guess we'll have to try that again."  
  
Spike cursed her silently each time her flesh grazed his, but he remained eternally grateful that she positioned herself so she could not see his erection.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
Dawn invited Clem to go with her to Xander's apartment. It was easy for Buffy to be Miss Popularity when she was in high school. All of her friends knew about vampires and the evil that roams the earth. Everything is easier for Buffy, Dawn thought. If I happen to let it slip that I staked a vampire on my way home from the cemetery everybody looks at me like I'm mental. So she spent a lot of time with Clem that summer. He was one of the only people, well people like creatures, she knew who didn't belong in some intrinsic way to the Slayer. Dawn was determined to stake out her own small place in the world. Right now that place was Clem.  
  
Usually she hung out with him at the crypt. While Spike was gone she'd pretty much had the run of the place. Now it was mostly only when Willow and Spike were out somewhere that she and Clem could lounge around and watch bad TV. Buffy had been ultra clear about how much recreational time she could spend with Spike out of her sister's presence, as in none at all.  
  
"Dawn!" Xander grinned, opening the door. "And Clem? Hey - you." Sometimes Xander wondered about the people Buffy let her kid sister hang out with. Not that he had anything against Clem in particular. The demon was a little gross with the skin thing, but hey, not much the guy could do about that. His friends on the other hand, those were things Clem could choose.  
  
"Spike and Willow are working on the Manuscript at the crypt. You know, the one about the end of the world?" Clem said, entering the apartment behind Dawn. "They're taking it pretty seriously."  
  
"Clem, welcome, okay? Mi casa es su casa, but the names Spike and Willow are not to be uttered in the same sentence in this house. Or Spike and Buffy. Or -"  
  
"No Spike! Check!" Dawn interrupted.  
  
She sat on the couch and drummed her knees with her fingers. Was this going to be one of those nights where Xander completely wigged out? She really hopped not. She had a theory about Sunnydale driving everybody insane over time, and Dawn was betting on Anya being next.  
  
"Beer?" Xander asked Clem, feigning calm. He wasn't calm. His ex-fiancé wouldn't even look at him, his best friend was turning into some sort of goth goddess and his other best friend was making nice with Mr. Sexual Assault. And there was nothing he could do about any of it. Just call me ineffectual boy, Xander thought bitterly.  
  
"Beer's good," Clem smiled, sitting next to Dawn on the couch.  
  
"Me too," Dawn chirped.  
  
"Oh har har. That's our wacky little slayerette," Xander called over his shoulder from the kitchen.  
  
"I'm never going to get to be a Slayer," Dawn pouted. Because Buffy got there first. Buffy got everything first.  
  
Clem tried to see that as a bad thing and failed. "Well, there can be only one."  
  
"Except that there's two." Dawn scowled and started poking through drawers for Xander's playing cards. Okay, so one of them was a homicidal bitch stuck in prison, but still, two.  
  
While Xander retrieved the beer and soda from the fridge Dawn expertly cut the cards in the living room. Last summer, when her sister was too dead to invent stupid rules about who she could hang out with, Spike had taught her all about poker. Now she tried to perfect her game against Clem, who always won anyway.  
  
"Draw poker, nothing wild," she informed Xander when he handed her the soda. "Ante up people," she demanded. Everybody threw a quarter onto the table and Dawn began to deal the cards.  
  
"So, Clem," Xander said awkwardly. What does one say to a demon with ten feet of extra skin on him? Ask him for tips on exfoliating? Xander wasn't sure there was a suitable conversational gambit in his repertoire. "So what kind of demon are you exactly? Do you have any cool powers?"  
  
"Xander!" exclaimed Dawn. It seemed unfathomably rude to pry into Clem's demon-ness. Not that she wasn't desperately curious herself, but asking him directly went against her new life philosophy. While Willow was in London, Dawn had decided people could no longer be pushed, prodded or questioned. That way led to sexual assaults in bathrooms and evil dye jobs.  
  
"It's kind of funny," Clem said, popping a chip into his mouth. "My kind are abnormally mathematically inclined."  
  
"Huh?" Xander said. "And I take two." Dawn, wearing her disinterested dealer's face, dealt him two cards.  
  
"We're like the abacus of the underworld," Clem explained, accepting one card from the teenager.  
  
Good at math. That would lend itself to counting cards, right? Dawn laid her cards facedown on the table with a sigh. That must be why she never won a single game that summer.  
  
"I think I fold," she said.  
  
"Isn't there some nefarious purpose behind the skin?" Xander demanded. He tossed his hand on the table as well.  
  
"Nope. It just keeps me warm." Clem gave a clueless grin. "Are we still playing?"  
  
"Spike's won against you," Dawn said thoughtfully. Did that mean Spike had supernatural mathematical powers too?  
  
"Spike cheats," Clem shrugged. He had been known to cheat as well, but not against Dawn. That just wouldn't be fair.  
  
At the sound of Spike's name Xander threw his beer across the room, frightening Dawn who managed to stifle her shriek. The bottle exploded against the far wall, spraying sticky foam and glass throughout the distant half of the room.  
  
"I feel better now," Xander proclaimed. "Much less tense."  
  
Dawn didn't think he looked any less tense. She tucked her arms close to her body and bit her lip. Maybe Xander would be the next one to crack after all.  
  
"That's going to be hell to get out of the carpet," Clem said, pleasantly oblivious.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
There were stained, rumpled sheets of legal paper littering the entire floor of the crypt. It looks like the morning after Mardi Gras in here, Spike thought. Each yellow, lined page was covered in the same sort of gibberish as the one in his hand.  
  
It will be time/days/months of death/life/renewal. Blood/manna will stop/flow/purify until the rising/death/loss awakens.  
  
Right, so blood, mayhem, the usual apocalyptic promises, he could tell that at least. But it had been three months since Buffy stopped the first portent, so where the hell was the blood?  
  
All this blithering about death was making the vampire hungry. Time to turn his attention to his own meal. Fangs eager and exposed, Spike growled at the kitten sitting before him on the counter. Failing to understand the gravity of the situation, the fluffy ball looked up and him and mewed for attention.  
  
"Don't bother begging for mercy. You're dinner and that's that," he warned the pitiful creature.  
  
He hadn't had anything warm and alive in months. It felt like eons really. Not that one little kitten was a full meal, but it was better to have a fresh aperitif to his musty pig's blood than nothing at all. If he at all the cats he had locked away downstairs in one sitting he supposed they might make a decent feast, but he wanted to draw the pleasure out. He won them. He could consume them as slowly as he wanted.  
  
The black kitten rubbed up against his hand and started purring. With a sigh Spike stroked his fingers along its tiny jaw line, which, much to his chagrin, the cat seemed to enjoy. Rumbling with content, the kitten rolled over to let him pet its fuzzy stomach. Bloody hell. It was really cute.  
  
"I'm going eat you little kitty," he reminded them both. Oh bugger it all. With an exclamation of contempt Spike let his ridges fade, submerging the demon to let the soul run rampant over his good judgment.  
  
"It's cute," Tara said cautiously, lowering her head so she was eye to eye with the kitten. "Really, really cute." She smirked up at him.  
  
"You push me on this and I'll kill the damn thing out of spite," he warned her. The ghost looked unconvinced. When Tara reached out a hand to pet the kitten it shied away from her. Spike noticed the feline's terror with acute interest.  
  
"You're out of place here," he said, hoping the dead witch would not turn him into a toad for this piece of candor.  
  
"So are you," Tara retorted, hiding the scorned hand behind her back. The skin between her eyebrows crinkled and Spike could not remember if that meant hurt or anger on her. Maybe it was both.  
  
"Demons, vampires, this world was ours first, pet. Technically I'm home."  
  
For a moment Tara looked uncertain. She had always chastised Willow for using magic too much, twisting the natural order to suite her need of the moment. There was nothing natural about haunting the undead.  
  
"There's something coming," she said, hoping to distract the vampire from this line of questioning. There was no way in hell she was going to tell him the real reason why she was there.  
  
"The Massacre?" Spike was suddenly interested.  
  
"You're kind of important in it."  
  
I kill people? I can't do that anymore, Spike thought. No more hunting with the chip electrifying my brain. The kitten cowered away from Tara's ghost and he picked it up out of pity, cradling it against his chest. Through his shirt Spike could feel it purring in terror. Some people had laughed as he killed them. Most begged or told him stories about their families, but the ones who were the most frightened laughed in his face with a touching impudence.  
  
"You told me I wouldn't have to come back here to the Hellmouth," he said accusingly. The gibe was implicit. You lied to me before. How do I know you won't lie again?  
  
He was going to argue with her now? Tara twisted her hands together and thought.  
  
There were things she could do to him. The gift was his, but she could do something small like make every CD player, or radio, or TV he ever used play "Come On Eileen" over and over again until Spike gave up and promised never to question her again. Or, to be a little more comprehensive, she could conger a small demon to sing "Rikki Don't Loose That Number" quietly in his ear so he was the only person who could hear it for eternity. Tara was pretty sure Steely Dan would drive the vampire out of his mind. Maybe it was best to try for honestly before resorting to any tricks.  
  
"I made a mistake," she admitted, looking nervous, as though there was something the vampire could do to her.  
  
"Did you? Then maybe you've made another one."  
  
"I'm trying to be helpful," Tara snapped, frustrated. She should have picked somebody else to talk to. Somebody less callous.  
  
"Well I've been warned. Now go away; you're frightening my kitty." Spike didn't wait to watch her go. Turning he carried the nervous feline down into the lower level of the crypt. Tara glared at his retreating back for a long moment before choosing to dissipate.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
"The children will die first," she decided, leading her tribe up through the tunnels. "Humans always cry lovely tears over their babies. And they remember them forever and ever."  
  
"Maybe for once we will not be forgotten," Judas said beside her. He took the name because it implied age, although he was still young, not even a decade. She had turned him to replace another, a lost lover, and he was conscious of always trying to best that absent presence.  
  
"I see sorrow and I see blood. Sweet little children tasting like lemon- drop and cherry candies. They will melt in our mouths. The ghosts of the parents will wail and mourn."  
  
Ah, Judas thought, so we kill them all.  
  
Her minions followed her up into the night, flowing behind her like the train of a coronation robe. She could feel their eagerness pushing at her back, making her strong.  
  
Judas had met other vampires, ones who thought they had power. Even they moved in fear, hunting their victims like 1950s movie noir gangsters, hiding in alleys, skirting through the shadows in search of prey. Not her. She only had to smell the air and know where the right victim could be found. It was perfect.  
  
She led them, her dark children, into a dark auditorium. On the stage young humans in gauzy skirts bumbled around, nervous in front of the crowd, forgetting their steps. Dancing unhurriedly toward the platform she hummed a little song to fill the awkward silence. Nobody spoke when she lifted a small towheaded child into her arms and smiled.  
  
"You look just like a doll," she said with wonder, her features sliding into something horrid and snake-like. As she drank she allowed the child to scream. A little background music was always nice.  
  
Now that she had drawn first blood her followers attacked, drinking and killing, mindful they were not to let anyone escape. 


	12. 

He was going to have to get a computer, Spike decided. He thought for a while the technology would wither away, like the eight-track. They all knew from the beginning - the old ones - that thing was never going to make it. Laptops now, they might have staying power. Willow had designed a program that translated the Ratsgninrom Manuscripts into English, and the infernal machine was doing a hell of a lot better job than he had. Sod it all. No wonder Giles hated these bloody things.  
  
Spike sat on the floor of the training room, poking timidly at the keyboard of Willow's computer. Just to tempt fate he had sat in a large swath of sunlight. Dying might be better than trying to read through this shit.  
  
Even in English the text was completely garbled. "And so it will be on the seventh night of the sixteenth moon of the year between years that the dreams will be sent forth to she who walks in darkness and blood will flow into the weeks of Thead."  
  
Well good for the weeks of Thead, Spike growled at the screen. Earlier that morning he had given all his weeks worth of happy, living, feline blood to Clem who could eat them with impunity. Stupid bloody annoying conscious. It made about as much sense as these moronic ramblings. He added "weeks of Thead" to his list of things to look up in Giles' books. She who walks in darkness? How about every woman he had met since being turned? Could these stupid, annoying, insane prophets be any more vague?  
  
He looked up when the door from the Magic Box opened. It was Xander, hauling his tools into the workout space. Well, this should be entertaining.  
  
"Spike," Xander scowled, dropping his toolbox heavily to the floor.  
  
Xander could not believe how easy it had been for the vampire to insinuate himself back into their lives. What was it now? Three months that he had been back in town? Hell it hadn't been two weeks before Spike was teaching Dawn how to fight, and training with Buffy. It made Xander sick to think of the Slayer brushing up on defensive technique with her attempted rapist. Of course he had tried talking to her about it, but she got that brittle look she wore when she had set her mind on something stupid and didn't want to hear it. "He has a soul," she said, as though that absolved him of everything.  
  
So what, Xander asked himself. So Spike has a soul now and doesn't seem have that pesky allergic reaction to the sun. Does that make it easier for his victims? He was pretty sure the answer was in the negative.  
  
"I can't believe you had the gall to come back here after everything you've done," Xander said, because shutting up was for other, more intelligent fools. Besides, he had the chip on his side.  
  
"Buffy asked me to," Spike said in a careful monotone. While it was possibly not the smartest thing to say, it was true. The truth had become irritatingly important to him lately. And sometimes, like now, the truth was fun.  
  
Xander shook his head. "I do not get the women in this town. Maybe it's something in the water? Because they all seem to forget what a worthless, murdering low life you are. They may be blinded by the pretty face, but I'm not."  
  
Spike closed the laptop with an amused smile. "So you think I'm pretty do you? Sorry I can't say the same."  
  
He rose to his feet in one smooth, feral motion. "I am here as a favor to the Slayer. When she asks me to leave I'll go."  
  
"Yeah, you're so fucking honorable. So you want to explain to me why you're hanging out with Willow? If you think you're going to get any you're stupider than I thought."  
  
To be perfectly honest, Xander did not have the heart to bring the subject of Spike up when he was with Willow. When she was in a bad mood he could not fathom starting a fight. All he wanted was to make her smile. When she smiled it was Willow! Smiling! There was nothing in the world he would trade for that. There was zilch to stop him from venting his feelings about the friendship at Spike.  
  
Turning his head slowly, Spike watched Xander stalk deliberately around the edge room, allowing himself a leisurely pause before he replied. This game was all about timing.  
  
"Willow comes to me," Spike said smugly as Xander passed by the weapons rack. It was important to him that Harris attack first. Poor predictable Xander, he looked so surprised when Spike spun out of the path of the knives. Ducking and swerving he counted, one, two, three. The blades knocked against the far wall and fell.  
  
Walking over, Spike nudged one of the daggers with the toe of his scuffed boot. He had money now. He supposed he could buy a new pair, but then there would be all that tedious breaking in of the leather.  
  
"Very nice," he congratulated. "I think you bent a tip though. Slayer won't like that."  
  
Xander selected an axe from the weapons rack. He couldn't take it anymore: Spike's posturing, his smug presence, the shame in Buffy's expression when she tried to explain why she brought him back. Buffy should never need to be ashamed of anything, never had been ashamed of anything before Spike. And any advice this monster had to give Willow could only be poison in her ear. Everything he touched died.  
  
"You can leave," Xander said, brandishing the razor sharp axe, "or I can kill you. Pick one."  
  
Slowly Spike reached into his pocket, retrieved a cigarette, and lit it with a flick of his lighter. Buffy would be upset. She hated it when he ashed all over the training mats.  
  
Cigarette dangling rakishly from his lips, Spike crooked a finger at Xander and winked. "Come get me, Cutie."  
  
On some level Xander was right, Spike admitted. His presence did hurt Buffy - or so he had thought before the Bath of Confusion - and he didn't have any right to be around her. Willow was so lost and confused she would latch onto anybody sympathetic, even if that body had been dead for over a century. It was pitiful how Xander always wanted to protect his friends and never ever could. Bloody shame that.  
  
Xander knew this was too easy but he stormed across the length of the training room anyway, swinging his axe in a wide arc, testing its heft.  
  
"There is nothing good in you," he said. Why did he need to explain this? It wasn't like Spike had forgotten what he was, even if the Slayer was sinking into some delusional state.  
  
"It must drive you mad, that Buffy could have chosen someone like me and always rejected you," Spike mused with a cruel smile.  
  
That should be the ticket to send Harris right over the edge. Apparently it did because Xander lunged in, axe high, ready to bring it crashing down on Spike's head. It would not be a clean death. No tidy stake through the heart for old Spiky, Xander thought, throwing all his weight into the swing. The vampire didn't flinch, simply raised one hand and caught the handle of the weapon before its blade could fall.  
  
Right, Xander berated himself, vampires strong. Humans weak. How could he forget that? It was like geometry all over again.  
  
"I have been wanting to do this for bloody ages," Spike smiled. This was going to be worth it.  
  
With his free hand Spike grabbed Xander by the throat and slammed his head into the wall. He hadn't planned it, but the opportunity was too good to pass up. Xander was out instantly but Spike was fully conscious for the pain that electrified his scull.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
"You hit Xander?" Buffy demanded. The vampire was propped up in a chair in the Magic Box, his head still throbbing from the chip's activation.  
  
"Did I not mention the part about the huge bloody axe aimed at my neck? I think it hurt me more than him."  
  
Dawn daubed at his head with a wet towel in a way that did nothing to alleviate the pain. Xander moaned from the floor.  
  
"Stupid git," Spike sneered.  
  
"Spike! Shut up," Buffy snapped.  
  
Dawn rolled her eyes and was rewarded by a surreptitious smile from Spike. At least the Bit was on his side.  
  
"Spiiiiikkke," Xander groaned.  
  
Standing over him Anya debated how helpful she wanted to be. "It's okay. Spike hit you with - what did you hit him with?"  
  
"The wall."  
  
"Spike hit you with the wall, but you are going to be fine." Anya decided that was helpful enough and walked away, leaving Willow to deal with him.  
  
"I don't care who hit whom with what," Buffy said rapping her knuckles against the round research table.  
  
Nobody paid any attention to her. Anya was watching Willow comfort a groggy and disoriented Xander, who was still sprawled on the linoleum floor and acting, Buffy couldn't help thinking, like a big baby. Being knocked out was hardly a new and interesting experience for him. Much to the Slayer's dismay, Dawn was still fluttering around Spike like a neurotic moth. Now that she knew the soul didn't curb all his violent tendencies, Buffy felt her wary trust in the vampire ebb a little.  
  
"If the women will stop tending to the men-folk for two fucking minutes I have something to say!" Buffy said, raising her voice.  
  
Everybody turned, even Xander with his head lying in Willows lap. Awww, they were paying attention to her. Wasn't that sweet? Buffy brandished a newspaper in the air.  
  
"The Massacre has begun. I think."  
  
"They're publishing it in the paper now? Cool. Why are we wasting all our time with the manuscripts again?" Willow asked.  
  
Spike hauled himself upright in his chair and crumpled forward onto the table. Buffy slid the newspaper across to him. "I suppose this must be the week of Thead," he mused to himself.  
  
"The what of who?" Dawn asked, leaning over his shoulder.  
  
"Yes. A lovely summation of all my research," Spike frowned. Something was wrong with the paper. Wait, something was wrong with him. "What does it say, love? I can't get my bloody eyes to focus."  
  
"Serves you right," Xander muttered from the floor.  
  
"Keep your eye on the apocalypse people!" Buffy ordered. "You can kill each other after we save the world."  
  
Time was when the Slayer spoke the team listened. No, Buffy supposed, they had never actually listened, but there was no time like the present for starting a new tradition. Was this how Giles had felt?  
  
"Fifty-seven slaughtered at local children's dance recital," Dawn read aloud over Spike's shoulder. "The doors to the hall were locked and everybody inside was murdered. All the victims were marked with a unique two-pronged knife wound puncturing the neck. Police suspect gang activity."  
  
Anya sat down at the table and pulled the paper towards her. "So then it's over? The Massacre I mean. Are we on to the next portent?"  
  
"The prophecy said the blood would run in the streets. Whoever is doing this will kill until we stop it," Spike said, his forehead resting against the cool surface of the table. That didn't feel better either.  
  
"Vampires. I can handle that," Buffy said, sitting across from Spike. We'll find them tonight, poke them with pointy sticks and call it good. I like old school slaying."  
  
"We?" asked Dawn. "As in all of us? As in I get to go too?" Buffy didn't say no, which Dawn decided to take as a yes. "Neat," she grinned.  
  
Oh sure, Buffy thought. Slaying: a fun after school activity for all.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
That night there would be only nine. Behind her the minions growled and hissed among themselves, discontented. Nine was a paltry number. They had come to the Hellmouth to gorge themselves, to kill not just for nourishment but for pleasure. The streets were meant to be their hunting grounds. Now she wanted to leash them like dogs, turn them into toothless eunuchs to bring her a handful of humans untouched.  
  
Strolling slowly through the passageway, waiting for nightfall, she glanced back towards her followers. "If you don't stop whining I shall eat your eyes for pudding," she told them with a sweet smile. The grumbling behind her stopped. Satisfied she took Judas' arm and continued walking.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
The crypt was cold and dead when Spike came back that night. Cold and dead just like me, he thought. Ha bloody ha. He had expected Clem to be lounging about getting hot sauce on the furniture as usual. Instead all he found on the couch was Dinner, curled up and sleeping in a little black ball. When he stroked her head the cat yawned and went back to ignoring him.  
  
Spike supposed he'd best start examining the printed translation of the manuscripts he held in his hand, do his bit to ward off imminent death and the end of life as they knew it and all that, but his head still ached from the massive migraine he gave himself that afternoon and he couldn't work up the energy to give a shit. All he wanted to do was sleep for a decade, roll over and wake up after the world had gone to hell. Sleep might not be the worst idea, he decided. Give his body a chance to regenerate some of the brain cells he'd fried with the chip.  
  
Going down the ladder he gave an experimental sniff. Someone had been sleeping in his bed. Someone cold and long dead was still there. He could see her in the gloom, stretched out on his sheets with predatory grace, but he climbed in anyway. Nostalgia, he admitted, was a bitch. Sleepily she twined her long, pale arms around his body.  
  
"Hello William."  
  
"Hello Dru," he smiled. He thought it might be her. Not that Drusilla was the only vampire to have a taste for children. He had been known to take a nip from the odd kiddie himself, but there was something about the style, the brutality and neatness of the deaths that felt like the work of someone in the family.  
  
She kissed him, which was an easy thing to do again. Drusilla's lips, the dusty taste of her skin, everything about her felt like home. Then she raked her long fingered nails down his cheek, drawing blood. Yeah, that was familiar too.  
  
"What's the problem, pet?" he asked, grinning.  
  
"I have not forgotten you know. Naughty boy, to tie me up and promise my death." She smeared her fingers with his blood and licked them clean. "The song says I shall forgive you, would you like that? Can you hear the drums?" With the flat of her hand she patted the rhythm of a heartbeat on his chest.  
  
"Of course I want you to forgive me, Dru," Spike said softly, his fingers wrapped around her seemingly frail waist. It had been too long since he's had a good lay and Drusilla, well there were reasons they lasted over a hundred years together. Was he really going to do this? No. He was defiantly, probably not going through with it. He should stake her. Angel with his soul had set her and Darla on fire, but he wasn't Angel. Maybe Spike could convince her to go away, back to Europe where there were no Slayers or annoying prophesies.  
  
"Dru-"  
  
"Shhh!" With one quick, feline motion she was straddling his body, the soft silk of her dress riding high on her pale thighs. "I have a present for you. Do you want to know what it is?" she pouted.  
  
He longed to ask if it was warm. Not alive, obviously, but he could eat something freshly dead. Wash the sour tang of pig's blood out of his mouth. Yes, yes, tell me what it is.  
  
"To tell the truth I think I've had enough presents for a while." Damn it. The nausea inducing soul was going to bollix everything up. Would the green- eyed cave demon take it back? Probably make him go through the bloody trials again.  
  
Drusilla giggled, her happiness bordering on hysteria.  
  
"I was going to tell you all about it, and then you would laugh and clap your hands, but now it shall have to be a surprise." Then she brutally slammed his head into the wrought iron bed frame and everything went black. Drusilla patted his cheek lightly, checking to make sure he wasn't faking. Sometimes her William could be so devious when he wanted to be.  
  
"Judas?" she sang out into the tunnel. "Here darling. Good pet, I thought you had wandered off looking for trees and light. You were not looking for light, were you?" she asked, suddenly suspicious.  
  
"No mistress," Judas said humbly. He stared at the body of his predecessor lying vacant in the dark bed. Drusilla brushed his cheek with her lips.  
  
"Bring him," she whispered, and wandered slowly into the tunnel's darkness. There was nothing left for him to do but gather Spike into his arms and follow her.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
"Wow. I never knew slaying could be so boring," Dawn complained.  
  
"Yeah," Xander agreed. "The cemetery is kind of dead. Dead with the deceased. Where the hell are the vampires?"  
  
"There does seem to be a dearth of the undead," Willow agreed. Xander wondered how she could see anything from under that floppy black hat.  
  
"There have to be vampires somewhere," Buffy complained. "I was promised blood flowing in the streets. We can't even find a trickle. Wait. Is that supposed to be a good thing?"  
  
"I don't think we're looking in the right place," Anya complained.  
  
It was November now and the nights were cold again. She tugged her thin sweater around her body and wished she were home in her warm bed. Then Anya wished there was someone in her bed to keep it warm. Not that she could grant her own wishes, damn it.  
  
"Why would there be a massacre in the cemetery? If the vamps are killing people doesn't that kind of indicate they've already risen?"  
  
"Uh, Anya has a point," Willow said, realizing afterwards those were probably her least favorite words in the world.  
  
Well, second least favorite, right after "Your shirt." Willow stopped on the grass, fighting to forget the memory. Think about it later, Willow ordered herself. Now is saving the world time. Shit. All her friends had stopped walking and were looking at her. Xander looked like he was going to say something supportive and Willow didn't think she could handle that right now.  
  
Willow forced a smile and gave a half-hearted wave. "Hi. Still here."  
  
Buffy looped her arm through her friend's and they walked on. Whenever I think she's getting better Willow goes all catatonic on me, Buffy thought. Was this what I was like when I came back? No wonder everybody was so freaked out.  
  
"Have to agree with Anya on the futility of the cemetery patrol," Buffy said.  
  
"That means the vamps could be anywhere," Dawn complained. "What are we going to do now?"  
  
Cast a demon locater spell, Willow thought. Instinctively she looked for the power inside herself to cast the spell, then rolled her eyes. Just stop that already.  
  
"We'll do a sweep of the town. Break up, look for pale people in outdated clothes."  
  
Buffy's friends were kind enough not to tell her it was a crappy plan.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
Xander decided Buffy didn't think they were going to find anything because she let him wander off on his own. Okay, he admitted, I'm not the swingingist slayerette on the Hellmouth, but I can hold my own in a fight. Sometimes.  
  
Who the fuck was he kidding? He lost to chipped Spike. That had to constitute some new low.  
  
I have other things, Xander comforted himself. I have real world skills. He missed Anya telling him his skills were more than adequate. Let's be honest old buddy, old friend, he said to himself. Anya not looking at me like she wants my insides to be my outsides would make me do a happy dance. His expectations were not high. Civility in conversation would festoon his world with joy at the moment.  
  
Not that his life was empty.  
  
"I can swing a hammer with grace and deftness," Xander announced to the empty street.  
  
"Can you now?" a voice purred in his ear. Xander turned, smiling at the pretty woman next to him, then recoiling as her face grew lumpy and fangey.  
  
Instinctively he backed away from her malicious grin, and slammed blindly into another vamp. This was bad. This was high in the un-good, Xander thought, fumbling for the stake in his pocket. The unseen vampire behind him clasped Xander's arms firmly to his side.  
  
"My what a strong grip you have. Have you been working out?" Xander quipped. More with the inane jokes. Then again, now probably wasn't the best time to be considering a major personality overhaul so Xander quickly forgave himself.  
  
"Some people like it when their prey fights back," the vamp in front of him laughed. "I don't."  
  
Strong hands tightened around his arms as she slid something onto her pretty, pale hands. Brass knuckles. What did she need those for, Xander wondered.  
  
"I'm not allowed to keep you," she pouted, "but that doesn't mean I can't play with you some."  
  
Oh, Xander thought as she slammed her fist into his stomach, that's what those are for. He hoped he would pass out before they killed him. 


	13. 

The sacrifices were lined up around the edge of the circle. In the center Judas had suspended Spike from the ceiling with heavy chains, arms stretched over his head, feet brushing the rock floor.  
  
Her boy was asleep, but he would wake up soon. Drusilla tapped her fingers along the blades her minions offered to her. Drusilla had tried raising William already. In her high, quavering voice she sang him a song from a cabaret they ate at in Paris, 1896. When that didn't work she allowed Judas whip long red stripes into Spike's pale back that reminded her of the ribbons in Ms. Edith's hair. Then Judas tried tickling his knee with a crowbar. Still no response, although Judas seemed to perk up some. Angelus, Dru remembered distantly, was always happier after he hurt someone. She hoped her boys would get along.  
  
Finally Drusilla chose a long serrated knife and turned back to Spike.  
  
"Don't you want to wake up? We can walk through the oceans and I will cover you in flowers," she offered. Spike remained limp and silent. Oh well, she had tried. In one cruel, swift motion Drusilla shoved the knife into Spike's bare stomach, through flesh and muscle, deep into his intestines. Dru imagined the iron teeth of the blade must be hungry after all this time. It was only polite to offer her guests a meal.  
  
As she extracted the blade, tooth by tooth so she could examine the pretty crimson bits it carried with it, Spike's eyes slowly opened.  
  
"Drusilla?" he muttered, through clenched teeth. His eyes were gummy and he couldn't tell where he was.  
  
Drusilla kissed his cheek tenderly, running her tongue along the sharp line of his cheekbone. A brief desire floated through her to cut herself against all his brittle edges, but there were things to be done. Everyone was watching her expectantly. Keeping her face to Spike's neck, inhaling his fear and exhaustion, Drusilla drew the rough edge of the knife down along his ribs, ripping away the alabaster skin, exposing blood and muscle to the dusty cavern air.  
  
"I'm going to draw you a picture, darling boy, and I need some paint. You don't mind, do you?"  
  
In response Spike hissed in pain, but there was nothing he could do to stop her.  
  
Her followers swirled around her. Now they didn't complain about missing their night's slaughter. This was what nourished them, not blood but agony. Destruction made their knees grow weak with longing. To see William the Bloody tortured and wrecked was an entertainment more valuable than one meal out of an eternal lifetime. Each minion came forward snarling, digging prying fingers into Spike's wounds, cupping small lakes of blood in their palms. Carefully, because she frightened them, they traced precise lines on the floor with the cold liquid. Everything would be perfect.  
  
As Drucilla carved away at Spike his limbs grew strangely cold, the pain receded, and his eyes cleared. Lucidity was nice, he decided. It made you notice things. Someone was screaming for one. Was that him? Probably not, it took a bit to make him cry out. Like a dead witch with hot little fingers. Were any of the people around him witches? Four humans in front of him outside of the pentagram Dru was painting with his blood, four in back then. Math. He was doing math. The blood on the floor looked strange. It smelled frozen, or was that him?  
  
Drusilla was before him again, smiling and happy. Good, then. Spike had always wanted Dru to be happy. With a high, insane laugh, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, her mouth warm against his. Sagging against the chain Spike suspected something was wrong, but he could not figure out what.  
  
Somewhere, somewhere that was not where he and Drusilla were, somebody was speaking in Latin. Magic then, he decided as Drusilla's searing fingers slid down his chest, teasing the open wounds. Around the perimeter of the circle he could hear bodies dropping to the floor. Were they dead? Would Dru let him have a sip? She was moving closer like she wanted to whisper a secret, her fingers wrapped around his neck, drawing him in.  
  
Dru's fingers, coated with blood, pressed into the back of Spike's head, incinerating him, boring into his brain. Now that it hurt, now that she was scalding him inside and out with her hot fingers in his skull, he couldn't scream.  
  
Then it was over and Spike was gasping for air he didn't need. This wasn't fun anymore. Had it been fun?  
  
"Let me go," he whispered.  
  
"Thank me," Drusilla whispered back, smiling her secretive smile.  
  
Like hell, Spike thought. He was working up the energy to say it when Drusilla stepped back, her white dress coated in him. Holding up her hands all he could see was blood until she opened one fist, displaying a black speck on her palm. Resting among the scarlet like a crouched spider was his tiny little chip. With a conspiratorial smile, Drusilla crushed it between her fingers.  
  
"Thank me, William," she demanded.  
  
"Thank you," Spike whispered, and he meant it.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
It was the master's cave, Xander realized, or at least the tunnels around the subterranean church. He had woken up alone, underground, wondering why nobody had bothered watching him. Not that he was complaining, but why did everybody assume he was harmless? After it took him fifteen minutes to stagger to his feet Xander was almost ready to concede he wasn't much of a flight risk. Not that he didn't try when he saw shapes moving towards him in the darkness.  
  
Xander could not believe Spike, or what was left of him, was walking. Dried blood was caked on the vampire's practically naked body. As Spike moved the wounds opened, trickling crimson over his skin, and bone flashed through the ripped knee of his pants.  
  
I thought they roughed me up pretty bad, Xander thought, but reluctantly admitted he would not have survived whatever Spike had been through. His back alone looked minced. Drusilla walked beside him, decadently sullied, obviously with Spike's blood. Was that how they got off? No wonder Spike saw rape as a viable dating tactic.  
  
"H-Harris," Spike stuttered out. The cold was making it difficult for him to talk. Still, it numbed the pain for now and that could only be a good thing. At some point he would have to figure out how extensive the damage was, but right now he wasn't feeling too much of anything. His leg kind of hurt, though.  
  
"Doesn't he smell yummy?" Drusilla asked, running her cool nose across Xander's cheek. Xander began to shake with fear. Deep in her throat Drusilla purred.  
  
"You smell so tasty when you're scared. But you're not for me," she pouted.  
  
Really? Harris was for him? It took a while for Spike's smile to spread across his numb face.  
  
I knew it! Xander thought. Always evil! Always! No soul could stop Spike from being a sadistic bastard.  
  
"Just get it over with," Xander said. He wanted to be tough, but his voice sounded remarkably like pleading.  
  
"O-oh no," Spike shook his head with maddening slowness. "I'm go-going to e- enjoy this." Languidly he moved in close and slammed his fist into Xander's gut. Harris crumpled over, making a valiant effort to keep his feet. And there was no pain. Well, Spike admitted, there was a lot of pain lingering out there somewhere, but none from the hated chip.  
  
Unhurriedly he hauled Xander upright again. The chill didn't make going into game face any harder. Like a snake Spike drew in close and buried his fangs, aching from disuse, into Xander's neck. Spike didn't drink, preferring to watch the blood well up in the puncture and slip down Xander's neck. Slowly Spike licked the rivulets away. Tasted like candy.  
  
"Gah!" Xander complained and tried to pull away, but Drusilla's hand at the back of his neck held him immobile. The dim hope of a fast death was fading fast. Where was the Slayer? He wanted to be the one to tell Buffy her neutered vamp had gotten his balls back, preferably in time for her to save him.  
  
"It's a w-wonderful present, love," Spike said, looking at Drusilla. She was everything he had ever wanted for a hundred years. Everything he had been Spike owed to Drusilla's insane choice in an alleyway. Wrapping his arms around her with the taste of Xander's fresh blood on his tongue, Spike supposed this was about as perfect as his un-life was ever going to get.  
  
This is too disgusting, Xander thought as Spike leaned in to kiss his sire. Turn me, shoot me, drop me off a pier, but please don't mate over me.  
  
Spike tried to cement the feeling in his mind, Dru's hot tongue against his own, burning him, the silk of her dress scratching his exposed wounds. But the numbing cold made thinking a bitch, and he was pretty sure he had forgotten everything by the time she was dust falling through the air around him.  
  
Xander stared at the stake in Spike's hand, the one the vampire filched from his jacket pocket. He couldn't believe it. From the expression on his face apparently neither could Spike.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
Because it was Sunnydale, no one noticed two battered and bleeding men staggering together through residential streets. Spike, still cold to the marrow, didn't notice the carpenter's nails digging shallow crescents into his back, trying to keep a grip among the slick blood. As Spike walked he drug their weight inexorably forward. Xander steered, pushing or pulling them down dark streets past cozy homes with swing sets in the yards. Buffy's house was closest to where they exited the tunnels, although Xander doubted Spike even knew where they were going. The vampire just stumbled gamely forward, blindly hauling Xander up the porch steps to the door, which Xander opened. He fell through entrance alone, landing in the hallway on his broken arm. Giving up on the whole macho image thing, Xander cried out in pain. Ruined and bleeding, Spike leaned on the invisible barrier blocking his entrance to the house. His eyes were open, but he couldn't see anything but shadows.  
  
"Spike, come in," Xander said. Possibly not the smartest words out of his mouth. Hopefully this bit of gratitude wouldn't get them all killed. The barrier evaporated and the vampire fell to his knees inside foyer. There was sound booming around him.  
  
Dawn, running to investigate Xander's scream, gasped when she saw them and clattered down the stairs.  
  
Don't touch him! The chip! Xander wanted to say, but he was tired and his throat hurt and he was passing out. When he woke up Willow was beside him and he heard Buffy somewhere above him.  
  
"Shit," Buffy said looking at the two men passed out in the hallway.  
  
Standing at the bottom of the stairs in her pink flannel pajamas Buffy didn't feel particularly heroic. Beside her, Willow was examining Xander with some of her old competency and Dawn was, predictably, fussing over Spike. He's going to bleed to death all over my floor, Buffy thought. Except that he's already dead. Oh, yeah, way too tired for this. She sat on floor next to Willow and leaned her head against her friend's shoulder.  
  
"How's Xander?" she asked in a small, worried voice.  
  
"I think we should get him to the hospital," Willow said softly. The carpenter shook his head.  
  
"Couch," Xander insisted. Willow hesitated a moment. Everything looked pretty surfacey, but he winced when she touched his arm. If it was broken it he needed to see a doctor soon. Plus, internal bleeding was another fun and exciting possibility.  
  
"Shouldn't we call an ambulance?" Dawn asked, rubbing away some of the dried blood on Spike's neck. Despite her poking and prodding the vampire showed no interest in waking up.  
  
"No," Xander mumbled, struggling against Willow's soft hands. Somewhere in his mind there were stories he had to tell her about Drusilla, how pale she looked, that there was dried blood under her fingernails.  
  
"Not just yet," Willow hedged. Maybe Anya could take them to the hospital.  
  
"Willow will look after Xander," Buffy told her sister. "And there's nothing modern medicine can do for Spike. He'll heal."  
  
Dawn glared at her like she was a raving bitch. Well, maybe I am, Buffy conceded, too tired to care. But I don't think so.  
  
Willow and Buffy made up a bed on the couch for Xander and carried him into the living room fairly easily. Buffy was tempted to leave Spike on the floor in the hallway. He used to sleep on a tomb for god's sake, but Dawn would throw a fit. Besides, she didn't want to be tripping over him on her way to breakfast. Nothing like stepping on a dead body the first thing in the morning to start the day off wrong.  
  
It took all three of them to haul Spike up the stairs. In retrospect, it would have made more sense to put him in Willow's bed and let Willow sleep in the master bedroom with Buffy. But, the Slayer still had some residual guilt about stealing the big bedroom while Willow was in London so they lay the corpse on Buffy's queen sized bed. No way in hell was he bleeding all over Dawn's sheets. Knowing her sister she would take it as some stupid, romantic gesture.  
  
"Will he be okay?" Dawn demanded, staring down at Spike, wishing he would move just a little. The only way she knew he wasn't dead, dead of the forever kind, was that he wasn't dust.  
  
"He'll be fine, Dawnie," Willow assured the girl, leading her out the door by the arm. "He just needs some rest. So do you, Buffy. Get some sleep. I've got Xander covered." It felt strangely good, Willow thought, to be able to take care of other people again. Maybe she wasn't so useless after all.  
  
Sleep where? There's a dead body in my bed Buffy gripped, too tired to think about the strange mixture of pity and revulsion she felt towards Spike, unconscious and broken before her. If he was fundamentally different, intrinsically good now with the soul, then she had some measure of mercy for him. But if his decent behavior was some complex subterfuge, then the monster who had tried to rape her was in her bed, right where he had wanted to be. Not that this was going to be solved tonight.  
  
Sighing, she arranged Spike so he took up no more than exactly half of the bed. Knowing this was the worst idea ever, yet too stubborn to sleep on the floor of her own room, Buffy crawled under the covers next to the demon. If there are any happy spirits left out there, Buffy decided, they would let her wake up first. 


	14. 

Spike woke up hungry. Every last bit of him was in pain; supernatural cold still raged in his entrails, wrapped around the broken bones, wafted in his ruptured lungs and poured out of the deep slashes in his chest and back. Opening his gritty eyes he found Buffy standing over his body like an avenging angel. He hoped she was getting a good chortle out of this.  
  
"Those are not sexy wounds," she said, sitting next to him on the bed, antiseptic and bandages in her small hands. "We cleaned up most of the blood this morning. Can I take a look at your back?"  
  
Spike wanted to tell her not to touch him, but before he could work out the words Buffy was pushing him gently upright. The cuts along his back had bleed into the sheets, gluing him to the white cloth. He hissed as she pealed the sheet away from his skin, ripping open the lesions.  
  
"Oh, god." Buffy sounded adorably horrified for someone who had seen bloody death for the past six years.  
  
"D-d-Drusilla was p-pr-pretty pissed," Spike chattered out. There was more to say, but the stuttering was too frustrating. He could hardly talk. Spike tried to think of some plausible explanation why he should be so cold but could not think for the pain. With his delinquent, frozen mind he tried to remember a time when he had been in greater agony. There was not one. Then Buffy started in with the disinfectant on his back. Yeah. Okay, that hurt a little more.  
  
"B-Buffy st-s-stop that. I-I-I-I d-don't n-n-n-ee. I'll he-heal. "  
  
There was no reason to put up with hot, burning alcohol pouring in his wounds except to annoy him, or appease her. Spike stopped arguing. The smell of Buffy's blood, flowing millimeters below her skin made the demon want to make its presence known. Feeling his face shift, Spike strived to work the demon back down before Buffy was done torturing his back. In an odd way her ministrations made him forget about the rest of the pain racking his body.  
  
"Okay," Buffy said easing him back down onto the bed. "I think you're going to survive. Eventually."  
  
Spike looked awful. Buffy thought Glory had beaten the crap out of him, but bitchy hell gods of bad home perms had nothing on Drusilla. In some ways, with the blood mostly washed away, he looked worse. Now she could see in intimate detail the jagged, torn flesh peeling away from the muscles of his stomach and back, and the bone of his left knee white and exposed through the shredded cotton of his jeans. How he had gotten home was incomprehensible. Buffy was distracted from cataloguing injuries by his shifting face, flowing from human to vampire and back so quickly his eyes remained a murky green.  
  
"H-hungry," Spike stammered. When was the last time he had eaten? Not that he could do anything about it now. He had just about enough strength left lay down and die, so it looked like Harris was finally going to get a chance to chop off his head after all.  
  
"Dawn went to get you some blood, from your crypt." Buffy laid a comforting hand on his cheek, one of the only places Drusilla had not lacerated.  
  
The demon won. Spike's face solidified into a series of hard, animalistic ridges. Fangs heavy in his mouth, he knew he only had to turn his head and bite. Somewhere he must have the energy for that? One little taste, then she would kill him and this unending moment would stop.  
  
Under Buffy's hand Spike's skin was glacial. She moved suddenly, and Spike cursed having lost his chance. Somewhere beyond his line of vision Buffy was shuffling around, opening something wooden and hinged. Probably the weapons chest. Spike tried to follow her but could not get his head to move. Too tired. Too much pain. Once this chill was gone he would feel it more. Why was he so bloody cold?  
  
Buffy came back trailing blankets and a heavy down comforter. Gently she wrapped the layers around him, tucking the blankets close to his body, doubting it would stop his paranormal chill. Spike's yellow eyes never left the ceiling, his demonic face unyielding. She could not tell if the weight of the covers was hurting him or not.  
  
"Spike?"  
  
He didn't shift or blink. She rubbed her palms against her jeans. I have this problem, Buffy thought, about making the right decisions. I never do. Nervously she leaned over the vampire, knowing he would be able to smell her uncertainty.  
  
Too tired to move, Spike had no option other than to stare at the Slayer, whole and alive and demanding his attention.  
  
"I want to thank you for saving Xander's life. I know it's about the last thing on your list of priorities. Drusilla - I know what she meant to you. How hard it must have been."  
  
So he had done it then? He had killed Drusilla. Spike could still taste dust on his lips, but it seemed like a dream, far away and inconsequential. He wanted to cry and scream his anger, but more than that he wanted Buffy open and bleeding. Without blood he could not heal.  
  
"No n-no no, n-n-n-no," he said, because suddenly the gods of the dark realms were answering his desires. Buffy was leaning towards him and the demon cackled while the soul cringed, too exhausted to put up a fight.  
  
"D-d-d-don't. Don't p-please," Spike pleaded softly.  
  
By the time Buffy kissed him Spike was crying, not out of anger, but at his own futility, immobile and helpless and being kissed by Buffy who could only mean to mock him. Funny, he conceded. Cruel enough for one of my own jokes. Should take a bite and show her what a monster I really am. Instead he choked the demon back before she cut herself on his fangs. As soon as the Slayer let him go Spike turned his head, closed his blue eyes, shutting out her face, trying to ignore her warmth on top of his frozen body. When her fingers brushed his tear streaked face he growled.  
  
"Uh?"  
  
Buffy turned her head at the noise. Dawn stood in the doorway clutching a mason jar of blood to her chest.  
  
Ever since Dawn had left the crypt things seemed to be moving slowly, like those dreams where she tried to run from the faceless baddie and it was like sprinting through the ocean: exhausting and cumbersome. It took forever for Buffy to move away from Spike's blanket swathed body and stand in front of her sister. Dawn saw Spike's tear filled, azure eyes staring first into space and then focusing on her. She did not wonder what had happened before she entered the bedroom. Her mind was too full of the things she had seen at the crypt. All the important parts of her were still standing in the crypt, shaking with horror and fear.  
  
Buffy took the blood out of her sister's trembling hands.  
  
"Sweetie?" Buffy asked. Dawn's eyes slowly registered her sister's face. "Dawn what happened?"  
  
Unhurriedly Dawn's gaze slid away from her sister across the floor, up the bed, and met Spike's, staring at her impotently from under his piles of blankets.  
  
"In the hall," she whispered to Buffy. No, not the hall because vampires heard every little thing, didn't they? And this was not a little thing. "The living room," Dawn amended. That should be far enough away. Normally Dawn had every confidence that Spike didn't need her protecting, but seeing him laid out broken and dead made her want to cover his ears and shield him from what she had to say.  
  
Anya was downstairs folding the blankets Willow had covered Xander with the night before.  
  
"Willow's at the hospital," Anya said, placing her perfectly square folded blanket on top of the pile of them at her feet. With my car, the demon thought. The bitchy witch is driving my car, so I suppose I do care something for Xander after all. "I want to do something. Is there anything to do?"  
  
Buffy extended the jar of blood. "Help feed Spike. His fingers are broken. I don't think he's going to be able to hold anything." And he can't sit up, and he can't really speak.  
  
Anya took the jar, seemingly happy to be useful, and trotted up the stairs.  
  
"Now," Buffy said, embracing her jittery sister, "tell me what happened."  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
Dawn had gone to the crypt after breakfast, walking fast in the early morning chill. The monks had given her memories of Drusilla, a thin, pale woman with beautiful black hair. She didn't understand how someone so small could hurt Spike. Well, Buffy could, but other vampires had never been that much of a threat to him, right?  
  
The dew on cemetery grass soaked through her canvas shoes, making her feet feel annoyingly squishy. She wondered how long it would take Spike to heal from whatever it was Drusilla had done to him. Not long. Yay for the mystical powers of the undead. Un-life would be so cool, if it wasn't for that whole annoying instant evil thing. Except now he had a soul, so problem solved. Not that the soul was enough according to a certain 'oh I'm so cool and righteous because I save the world all the time' sister of hers. Sometimes Dawn thought Buffy almost forgave Spike. And why not? She forgave Angel pretty fucking fast. Other times Buffy's looks towards Spike were so cold and murderous Dawn wanted have a cheery little bonfire with all the stakes at the Magic Box. What if Buffy staked him while she was gone?  
  
During training Dawn had once tried to talk to Spike about how unreasonable Buffy was. "Has it occurred to you that if you don't spend less time thinking about your sis and more time practicing you're going to end up dead?" he demanded in an icy tone. Hefting her crossbow back to her shoulder Dawn had decided the schizophrenic duo deserved each other.  
  
The door to the crypt swung open silently. Dawn had tried to convince Spike to do something to give the door a creepy squeak. At the suggestion he had given her one of those looks that meant, "If you're only going to say stupid things please shut the fuck up." The first thing Dawn noticed was that the inside of the crypt smelled funny.  
  
Dawn's memories, her very worst ones, were of walking into Willow's bedroom and finding Tara's body unnaturally silent and still. People should not lie on the floor like toys whose batteries have run out.  
  
This was not at all like finding Tara. Someone had a grand old time destroying every piece of furniture Spike owned: the TV was smashed, the stuffing ripped out of the comfy chair, the granite tomb was broken in half. Moving though the wreckage, Dawn wondered if Spike had lost his temper again. Then she stepped on something soft and giving, a mass of wrinkled flesh.  
  
Eyes adjusting to the dim light, Dawn realized what the strange smell was. It was Clem, all over the floor. Blood and flesh intermingled with the broken pieces of Spike's furniture, and glued wads of yellow legal paper together on the counter. Clem's head rested severed and bleeding on the open pages of Spike's big book of manuscripts, his vacant eyes staring at nothing.  
  
Feeling not at all like a dangerous demon hunter, Dawn quickly lost her breakfast, throwing up bile and acid on the stone floor amid the rest of the mess. There was nothing to do but sprint to the refrigerator, grab a jar of blood and scurry home. She wished she had run sooner. There had been too much time spent at the door gazing uncomprehendingly at the scene and now it was burned in her mind.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
"The doctor said no driving, concussion boy," Willow said from behind the wheel of Anya's car.  
  
"Will, do you even know how to drive?" Xander asked, bracing himself against the dash with the hand attached to the arm that wasn't broken.  
  
He was such a baby, Willow thought. She was barely doing seventy. What was the speed limit anyway?  
  
"Well, I did a lot of steering in your car that one day. And there was that thing with the semi!"  
  
Xander looked aghast. Okay, so now Mr. Funny was the only one who could makes jokes?  
  
"I'll go real slow. I promise, snails will pass us," Willow promised, pumping the break peddle.  
  
Xander sagged against his door, drumming his fingers impatiently on the cast. His arm hurt, the bites on his neck itched. Being the damsel was not fun.  
  
"Where is the evil fiend now? Bleeding to death in his crypt?" Xander asked hopefully. It had been a mistake, his mistake, to invite the vamp back into the house. If Buffy was hurt because of that.. Tough slayer, strong slayer, and he loved her more than Twinkies and chocolate milk, but she was brain dead to have not staked the demon already.  
  
Willow rolled her eyes. "Yeah, after he hauled you home we shoved him back out onto the street. Don't get all fraternal. He's at Buffy's. "  
  
"Wait. With Buffy?"  
  
"And Dawn, Willow affirmed. She was dutifully watching the road and missed Xander's wide-eyed look of terror.  
  
"The chip is out. He'll kill them."  
  
"No -" Willow wasn't sure if she was refuting Spike's chip free state for that he wouldn't hurt the Summer's sisters.  
  
"Will, yes. He hit me when we were in the Master's cave and this time there were no pretty fireworks in his head."  
  
"Maybe he just didn't notice it with all the other pain?" Willow glanced at Xander's face. His look of intense horror made her happy to turn back to the road. It wasn't like the chip worked on the Slayer anyway, and Dawn would be fine, she told herself. For one thing there was instant goodness (or at least instant not so evil-ness) of the soul. Right?  
  
Xander fought back the urge to hit something, like the window, because he was already in enough pain. Sometimes Willow's hopefulness about Spike was too much for him to bear. Especially now. What happened to the nihilistic, goth Willow they had all come to fear and love? Don't change the paradigm on me now, Will, he pleaded.  
  
"He bit me like I was a huge juice box o'blood," Xander confessed as though he had done something shameful.  
  
"Oh," Willow whispered. Biting the Scoobies was un-good. Add to the negative column all the stories Spike had told her about how much he missed his days of destruction and it looked like badness was about to ensue. "I guess we should start passing the snails then."  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
Dawn had crawled into bed beside Spike and was wailing her sorrows into Buffy's pillow. Spike wished she would mourn somewhere else, like Chechnya. Heartless winters, pervasive war, decimated cities: the renegade province would be the perfect backdrop for Dawn's agonies. At least in London Willow had been kind enough to sniffle quietly to herself. Clem was dead, and the vampire felt bad about it, but right now he felt worse for himself.  
  
Sitting on the edge of her bed Buffy stared hard at the pair and wanted to cry for completely different reasons than her sister. It was all she could do to keep from wrapping her fingers in Dawn's long hair and dragging her away from Spike's corpse. Now was not the best time to harp on the evils of extra-species relationships when her demonic best friend for the summer had just been ripped into bite sized morsels.  
  
Not that I'm the greatest role model, Buffy admitted. She laid her palm across the vampire's pale forehead as though testing for a fever. Under her hand Spike's flesh was still unnaturally cold. Unnaturally colder, because intimacy with Spike had always been like cuddling with a Popsicle.  
  
Spike closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of the evil sisters. His teeth were still chattering despite the heat of Buffy's hand tracing a line from his forehead, down his cheek. Yes, yes, you're very warm and tasty. Now fuck off, Spike thought.  
  
In the swath of sunlight spilling across the bed his skin glowed luminously. The blankets, worthless for warmth, had been thrown onto the floor, allowing the light to lay bare all his sever edges. To Buffy's eyes he looked thin and helpless and safe. Had she looked that frail to him, pinned on the bathroom floor? At that thought the Slayer snatched her hand away and Spike sighed in relief.  
  
"Buffy!" Xander shouted in wild alarm from the bedroom door. Despite the painkillers and the arm in the cast he still managed to launch himself across the room and yank the Slayer away from the bed and the deadly demon. The two friends tottered for a moment before falling onto the floor in an unceremonious heap. Thanks be to modern medicine, Xander thought, because that didn't hurt as much as it should have.  
  
"Are you okay?" he demanded surveying her neck. "Any puncture wounds?"  
  
"What?" Buffy was looking thoroughly un-amused with her new view of the ceiling.  
  
"Fido lost his leash. The chip's out," Xander frantically explained. Of course, the chip hadn't worked on Buffy since she'd been resurrected, but Xander couldn't seem to squelch his sense of dire urgency. Dawn, right. He should have rescued Dawn instead.  
  
"I know," Buffy said hauling herself back to her feet. "He told me."  
  
Dire honesty hadn't been an egalitarian move on Spike's part. Laboriously he had stuttered out his story in the hope that Buffy would haul her snack- sized sister out of his bed and let him die in peace. No such luck for the formerly evil undead. At that point Buffy reasoned if Xander didn't rank as a meal then Dawn was safe, for now. There would be time enough to re- evaluate their proximity when Spike was back to room tempter.  
  
Still on the floor, Xander opened his mouth to argue some more but was interrupted by Anya's sudden appearance between him and the Slayer. Buffy hoped she would have some awful news to relate and change the subject. That would be good. Explaining her questionable decision making skills to Xander? That would be bad.  
  
"Well, the crypt certainly was disgusting," Anya said, standing at the foot of the bed. Dawn lifted her puffy face and glared at the demon. Anya either didn't notice the girl's look or didn't care.  
  
"I found your book. It's kind of stained now, but here it is," she handed Buffy the manuscripts, its pages warped and soaked with blood. And it was still wet. Poor Clem, Buffy thought, cringing as she accepted the tome.  
  
"My very own book of the apocalypse, thanks, Anya," she said, trying to be grateful. Then something else jumped out of Anya's arms and raced under the bed.  
  
"What was that?" Buffy demanded, wondering if small fluffy demons were portents too.  
  
"A cat," Anya said. "I found it feeding off the remains. That can't have been very hygienic."  
  
"Feeding?" Dawn exclaimed. Not Dinner! No! The cat loved Clem. She loved Clem, and she was crying again.  
  
"D-di-dinner," Spike stuttered out.  
  
Of course it was. Buffy had forgotten about the kitten poker.  
  
"You were going to eat a kitten?" Buffy demanded, smacking the top of his head with the flat of her hand. Bad vampire! Buffy added mentally. Spike's grimace was annoyingly forbearing, as though an irritating child had just struck him.  
  
"Dinner is Spike's kitty. It's a pet," Dawn sniffled, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her shirt. Faster than a speeding bullet Dawn the Vampire Rescuer jumps into action. Wait, Buffy thought. That's my shirt.  
  
"Oh." Buffy was flummoxed. Spike was keeping pets? Clem was dead, Spike was chip free and the world promised to end someday soon. Of everything on that list the only one she had any control over was the apocalypse. Why was it only the big things she could wrap her hands around when it was the little things that made up everyday life? And what the hell am I supposed to do with you? Consolingly she ran her fingers through Spike's curling hair, as though to make up for her petulant smack.  
  
"Wait," Xander said, eyeing Buffy carefully. "You know about the chip and you're okay with it? You don't mean that we're just going to keep him?"  
  
Everybody in the room looked at the Slayer expectantly and Buffy ignored them all. 


	15. 

"As always, it's about the blood," Willow said, closing the musty book in front of her with a thump. Too bad this little research interlude was over. Now it was back to the Ratsgininrom Manuscript, its frail pages swollen and warped with Clem's blood. Just looking at the tome made her tummy all ooky.  
  
"I admit that night in the tunnels is a little fuzzy in my memory, but there was defiantly biting, and consumption. For anyone who's curious, I'm more than happy to show off the bite marks," Xander objected from the head of Casa Summers kitchen table. His good hand directed Willow and Buffy's attention to his offended neck.  
  
"So, what was wrong with my human blood that it didn't start the big thaw?" he demanded, which wasn't really what he wanted to know. What Xander truly wanted was an explanation of why, with a Massacre of the general Sunnydale population going on right now, they were wasting their time trying to fix the pet vampire. It was a question he'd brought up many times, in one form or another, over the past week and no one had managed to provide him with a satisfactory answer. Or, at least not an answer that satisfied him, which might not be the same thing at this point.  
  
"Well, he didn't drink enough," Willow explained, happy to exposition. "You said yourself it was more of a sip than a...a.Big Gulp."  
  
Sinking back in his chair, Xander closed his eyes against the pop culture imagery Willow had called up: thirty two ounces of his blood congealing in a tacky, colorful plastic cup for the vampire on the go. That was Will, always one with the words. He had a few words of his own he wanted to throw out there.  
  
"So we want to make him good and healthy so he can take another stab at it? I'm really not on board with this plan."  
  
"Spike saved your life," Buffy reminded him from the opposite side of her kitchen table. She tried not to sound irritated by Xander's habit of hijacking the moral high ground, but suspected it wasn't working. Her mind had been roaming back and forth, up and down, over her opinion on the vampire. She wanted to hate him, because that was easy, right? Xander certainly slipped into a state of passionate loathing with easy grace. And whenever he did she felt the need as Slayer and de facto leader to provide the niggling voice of reason, which was niggling her into the uncomfortable position of Spike defender extraordinaire.  
  
With blatant poignancy, Xander placed his broken arm, encased from palm to elbow in a plaster cast, on the table in front of him. At which point his hair, which hadn't gotten the memo on manliness, flopped childishly into his eyes. Annoyed, Xander pushed it back with his one fully functional hand.  
  
"Sure, Spike saved my life by not killing me. He rescued me from himself. Excuse me if I don't think dead boy gets a medal for not draining me dry," Xander snapped, more than happy to be making with the righteous indignation.  
  
"No! No medals," Buffy said. "Just, you know, soul plus you not dead, I'm thinking he might deserve the benefit of the doubt on this one. A Little. Maybe." Way to stand firm Slayer, she thought. Xander graced her with a look of contempt, and Buffy couldn't blame him.  
  
"Let's approach this logically," Xander offered, suspecting he was nearing the end of his own tightly rationed rationality. "You two want to keep Sid Vicious of the Undead around? Fine. Let's leave him nice and incapacitated. There's nothing so wrong with a frozen vamp. Or, we could chop off one of his legs! Remember when he was in a wheelchair? That was a Spike I could deal with."  
  
Which was, admittedly, slightly over the top, but Xander didn't give a shit anymore. If he kept talking somebody, at some point, would have to come to their senses and realize he was right on the vampires are bad issue. How hard a concept was it to grasp?  
  
Across the table, Willow and Buffy exchanged a glance. Oh no, Xander berated himself, I blew it. He knew that insane look in Buffy's eyes; the I 'heart' vampires expression. Thanks to his little rant the Slayer had officially joined Willow in the fans of Spike club.  
  
"I can get the blood," Willow chirped, ignoring Xander's entire contribution to the conversation. "We won't even have to open a vein if you're up for a little black market shopping"  
  
"You know me. I'm a shopoholic," Buffy said with mock seriousness.  
  
You have got to be kidding me, Xander thought, letting his head fall onto the kitchen table with a melodramatic thud. Portents were exploding all around them and they were going to get all sisterly and bondy over black market platelets?  
  
Willow grabbed her coat while Buffy slid one arm around Xander's shoulders and kissed his cheek.  
  
"Don't poke the vampire while I'm gone," she warned.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
It turned out the black market was the easy part. Shady demons dripping slime, trading hepatitis-infected blood for some old spell book Willow was obviously still reluctant to part from? No problem. Buffy wasn't even too scared about what the ugly creatures were going to do with the potent spells. It had to be light compared with the end of the world. Because this was apparently what she did now: bargain with the lesser evil for the greater good. There had to be a chapter against that in the hero handbook.  
  
By the time Buffy and Willow left the warehouse, blood in hand, the afternoon had slid into evening, turning the familiar alleys of the industrial side of town dark and foreign. There was no moon and the unlit streets were practically invisible, their edges defined only by the shadowy outlines of the buildings around them. Since Slayer powers didn't include nifty night vision Buffy didn't notice the bodies littering the pavement until Willow tripped over one, sending plastic bags of blood bouncing over the asphalt.  
  
"No matter how many times this happens, it's still gross," Willow said as Buffy helped her up.  
  
"Can't argue with that observation," Buffy agreed, tentatively hunting around in the dark for the packets of blood, shivering as her fingers brushed a still warm corpse. Warm bodies meant the vamps still had to be close by. Glancing at Willow, Buffy began to doubt Spike, shiny new soul or not, was worth all this trouble.  
  
"So, uh, this is the Massacre?" Willow asked, accepting the bags of blood Buffy passed back to her, trying to hide the hysterical edge in her voice. For the first time she realized life without magic was about to reduce her back to the status of snack sized victim, and it wasn't a position on the food chain she felt comfortable with.  
  
"Yeah. This is it. Every night."  
  
Why had she thought tonight would be any different? Buffy could feel the vampires all round them, an eerie itching inside her head that indicated demons were close, close enough that she should go slay them. Buffy's eyes shifted from Willow, to the distance, to the bodies, and back to Willow clutching the packets of blood to her chest. It was her birthright, her moral responsibility, to go forth and fight the Big Bad, but she couldn't leave Willow, and her stomach sank once again at the knowledge that she was choosing one person's life for another. I don't want this responsibility, she almost said out loud. Would she know she was an adult when she accepted the fact that life was unfair? Gnawing at her lip, Buffy brokered a deal with herself. Get Willow home safely, then come back out and slay the baddies. And the people who died in the meantime? Just one more thing not to think about. Right now she had to concentrate on finding the safest way home for Willow.  
  
"Th-the vampires? They'll come back through here," Tara whispered hesitantly in Willow's ear. "They're everywhere tonight."  
  
Willow turned and was struck breathless - again - by the immediacy of her insane vision: the texture of Tara's skin, her familiar nervous head bob, intimate details culled from her memory to form this most perfect mirage. Even in her imagination Tara looked uneasy and worried, as though the apparition was a mirror of Willow's own mood.  
  
"I can get you home safe," Tara told Willow with that little chin lift she used when she was sure of herself. Of course you can get me home, Willow thought bitterly. How was a delusion of her imagination supposed to guide her through a labyrinth of monsters? There was no inner spark left that could manifest itself as some hallucinatory savior. The Devon coven, with their chalk and their chanting took away everything that made her powerful. Their stupid light show left her head hollow and dark, and she hated them for it.  
  
"I can't see the way out," Willow objected softly.  
  
"Neither can I," Buffy admitted. "But I can feel the vamp's out there. They're coming closer." Buffy fished a stake out of her pocket, trying to decide between fight or flight, as though that were really a choice.  
  
"I think we need to go this way," Buffy said, pointing down the street in the opposite direction Tara was indicating with a tentative sweep of her hand.  
  
"No! She doesn't know the way! She can't protect you. Willow, you have to trust me," Tara pleaded, her beautiful voice hard with fear. Fear for me, Willow thought, stepping instinctively towards the vision and stumbling into another dead body. At that moment she was pretty frightened for herself too.  
  
"Willow?" Buffy demanded. In the dark she could barely make out what she had come to think of as that "out of body" expression clouding Willow's face.  
  
Be smart; don't be stupid, Willow ordered herself. Heart racing, she swayed like a reed between the Slayer and the apparition of her dead lover. Without realizing it she smiled, just a little, at the specter. With the death, and the dark and Tara, it almost felt like old times.  
  
Sensing victory, Tara's face lit up just like it had when Willow chose her over Oz.  
  
"Run. Now," Tara ordered, ducking into a dark alleyway, a flutter of lace and velvet.  
  
Feeling betrayed by her vaunted intelligence, Willow scurried after Tara, the sound of her hard soled boots against the asphalt booming like drums in the silent night.  
  
"Willow? Where are you going?" Buffy demanded, watching with growing frustration as Willow turned a corner and clumped off down an anonymous alleyway. There was nothing for Buffy to do but chase after her and hope they were not hurling headlong into the grasp of the enemy.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
Sitting on the coffee table, Buffy watched as Spike drank his seventh mug of warm, 98.6°, black market blood. Still in his tattered jeans, he had shivered away the past week on the couch, sallow and faded under a pile of ineffectual blankets. Now with the hot, human blood filtering through his body Spike's skin blushed demurely, a pale pink glow that spread across his face and chest, infusing his dead flesh with the illusion of life. Almost human, Buffy thought, touching his hollow cheek with the back of her hand.  
  
"You're warm," she said. Once again, Buffy thought, I am one with the obvious.  
  
"It'll fade," Spike said irritably, jerking away from her touch. Refusing to look at her, he wiped the bright trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.  
  
Taking the empty cup back she tapped out an uneven rhythm on the porcelain with her fingernails. She was irritated by his hostility. Having just risked death by vampire mob to break the damned spell, Buffy thought she and Willow were entitled to a tiny bit of gratitude. But now was not the time to wade through the vampire's emotional state. The Massacre bled on in an exhausting montage of dead bodies: throats slashed, hearts ripped out of chests, skulls cracked and exposed organs never intended to be seen. Buffy's tired eyes ached from bearing witness to death's grisly secrets. Every night people died, and she thought whoever said forewarned was forearmed should be shot.  
  
"Is it working?" Dawn asked from the arm of the couch where she sat holding the purring, contented kitty. With a concerned expression the teenager leaned in closer. Closer to the vampire without the chip. Buffy tensed, but congratulated herself for not ordering her sister out of the room and into a private boarding school in Main. Were there vampires in Main?  
  
"Yeah. It's working," Spike said with a cruel smile. The stutter was gone, facial expressions back on line. Maybe Xander was right, Buffy fretted, and the only good vampire was a frozen one. They would find out soon enough.  
  
Leveraging himself off the couch Spike stood easily, rolling his shoulders as though to relieve tension. It was one of his affectations of life; dead muscles didn't cramp up. By now, the brief flush of warmth generated by the fresh blood had exhausted itself, leaving his skin ashen once again, except for the angry red gashes healing too fast for Xander's comfort. Now that he was up and moving Buffy began to doubt her earlier compassion. The tension of waiting for Spike to do something eeeeeeevil was going to exhaust her. As though the Massacre wasn't doing that already.  
  
"Back to room temperature," he told Willow. "Thanks for the help, Red."  
  
"No problem," she smiled and patted his cold arm. "Just don't go and start eating people again. You'll make me look bad."  
  
"And with that ringing endorsement, can we get on with this?" Xander asked from where he sulked, half hidden, in the armchair by the fireplace.  
  
"Get on with what?" Spike queried, entranced by the clarity of his voice. His brain, inarticulate and frozen for so long, was ticking off a wealth of coherent, if useless, observations. Willow (fetching as always in her gloomy velvet coat) was using a new, somberly perfumed soap, Buffy had smudgy, tired circles around her eyes, and he had managed to loose his boots somewhere. And, his nagging, irate demon reminded him, he had killed Dru. He had murdered his own deranged, dark queen. Confused by the breaking waves of nausea rolling though his dormant stomach, Spike sat back down and waited for someone to tell him what the fuck was going on.  
  
"While you were all artic, I tweaked the translation some to try and get a handle on the whole bodies in the street problem we've been having," Willow said, sitting on the couch beside him. So much for his new powers of observation because Spike hadn't noticed the sheaves of paper in her hands.  
  
"The Massacre's not over?" he asked stupidly.  
  
"It so very isn't," Xander said, his voice hard and disgusted. "We've got death. We've got blood in the streets. It's your average portent for the end of the world."  
  
"So what have you done about it?" he asked Buffy, wishing for a shower and more blood before he had to start pretending like he cared about the world's problems.  
  
"What do you think I do?" Buffy demanded, irritated by his sudden Watcher- esq tone of authority. "I go out. I slay, but the damage one Slayer can do against an army of vampires is fairly minimal. And the general population? Not helping. People hear there's been a rash of murders in public areas and what do they do? They go our for dinner and get eaten. They meet their friends at the movies and they die with them."  
  
Died because she couldn't do her job. As the Slayer she was descended from a long line of warriors imbued with the sacred duty of keeping late night Cineplex's safe.  
  
"Mass stupidity isn't your fault," Spike said softly, knowing as the words escaped him that he was the last person who could comfort the Slayer, who could comfort anybody. His competence was destruction, the demon hissed smugly.  
  
"Maybe not, but saving the lives of the chronically stupid is my responsibility," Buffy retorted.  
  
Willow cleared her throat and glanced nervously from Buffy to Spike. "I, uh, think I know how to end the Massacre," she said.  
  
Buffy fought the urge to throw herself across the room and hug this new, wonderful, competent Willow who was so accurately miming the old Willow. Her best friend. The one who had magically (although obviously not magically) guided them home safely last night through a labyrinth of vampires. The one who would never, could never, kill anybody.  
  
Willow lifted a single sheet of paper in one black nailed hand and began to read, " So it will be that the spawn of the visionary shall rise from the blood of the sire and cast willing destruction into the weeks of Thead-"  
  
"Uh, Will? How about summarizing for the terminally exhausted?" Buffy pleaded, rubbing her eyes.  
  
"You need to kill the leader of the vampire mob and the Massacre will end," Willow said, obediently succinct.  
  
"I did that," Spike said, his voice low and dangerous as he glared at Xander. "I killed Dru."  
  
Willow shook her head. "Can I summarize less? Dru killed some, okay, lots of people, but that wasn't the Massacre. The Massacre itself? Technically that began after she died and was started by, I'm quoting here, 'the spawn of the visionary.'"  
  
"Ah-ha!" Xander said, pointing an accusing finger at Spike. "That would be you. You're Dru's spawn. Drusilla wanted the chip out so the two of you could paint the town red, with the blood. She thought you were the guy who would start the Massacre."  
  
"But I'm not massacring anything, am I? I've been stuck on the Slayer's couch for the past six days with mystical hypothermia. I haven't had time to engage in mass slaughter. Not that I would," Spike added quickly, seeing Buffy's eyebrows shoot up.  
  
"Dru must have turned somebody else," Buffy mused. "I just need to find him and kill him. Or her. To be fair."  
  
Willow nodded. "I think so. According to the big book of confusion, more with the quotes here so bare with me, 'The perpetrator of death will be killed by the shining Warrior of the People.'" With an unsuccessful flutter of her fingers, Willow attempted to hide a giggle. "I'm thinking that's you."  
  
Beside Willow, Spike gave a very un-Spike like laugh and even Xander, who was in no mood for fun, tried to smother a chuckle. Feeling betrayed by her friends, Buffy glared at them all. As though the Chosen One wasn't bad enough, now they had to stick her with this stupid Lone Ranger, faux Indian moniker too? In exactly what way am I shining, she wanted to know.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
Only the supernaturally inclined went out that night, which would normally mean Buffy and Anya and Spike. Except Anya said she had some things to do at the store that couldn't wait. Buffy refrained from pointing out that if the vamps ate her whole clientele nothing at the store would be very important. Without Xander to anchor Anya to the Scoobies, Buffy could sense the other woman drifting farther out of their circle, and Buffy didn't know if she had the time or the energy to do anything about it.  
  
So that just left her and Spike. Not much of a cavalry, Buffy admitted to herself. Especially since half of them might turn around and start attacking the civilians. Eating the civilians. Oh, she should have just left him at home.  
  
"These shoes don't fit right," Spike complained of Xander's white sneakers. And the hideous polyester shirt he'd borrowed from Xander irritated the welts on his back. Weak as he was, Spike trusted the sight of acid blue paisley would terrify his opponents to blindness.  
  
"Shush," Buffy insisted. "They'll hear us coming if you don't shut it."  
  
"Who exactly is going to hear us?" Spike demanded, throwing his arms wide to indicate the eerily empty road. They had checked out most of Sunnydale, examining the cold, silent streets, sliding past dark restaurants, closed stores, shuttered windows where Buffy could see her own drawn face, but not Spike tired and surly beside her. Obviously.  
  
Every so often a police car crept by, tires crunching on the gritty pavement, swirling their lights silently, and slowing down to assess whether the pedestrians were a threat or just stupid. If the cops looked inside their back bags and saw the axes and stakes Buffy was pretty sure she knew which category she and Spike would fall into.  
  
"There. They might hear us," Buffy whispered, pointing down the street at a police car, red lights flashing in soundless distress as the windows shattered loudly, vampiric arms reaching in to claim their victim. Seven to one, Buffy thought. If you could count a Sunnydale police officer as one.  
  
"I suppose you'll want to save him then," Spike said, as though it didn't matter to him either way.  
  
Maybe it doesn't, Buffy conceded, racing towards the marauders, not caring if Spike was following or not. For a few seconds all that was important was the thud of her boots against the ground, the freedom of running - the excitement of the fight to come. Faith was right; it was a high, this constant proximity to death.  
  
Then she was plunging her stake though the first vamp's chest, ripping through cloth and unyielding flesh to strike the silent heart. Not for the first time she was grateful that vampires disintegrated instead of falling bloodied and dead at her feet. Even if she was probably going to get some weird cancer from all the dust she inhaled over the years, it helped to preserve the illusion she wasn't just some glorified killer. Oh no, I'm the Shining Warrior of the People, she reminded herself. That was so much better.  
  
Buffy turned to face her next attacker but the vamp's headless body crumbled to nothing before she had a chance to strike. So Spike had kept up after all. He gave a short, sharp cough as he inhaled the dust of his victim. That's what you get for needless breathing, Buffy chastised silently. Then something caught her eye, five somethings with lumpy foreheads and fangs.  
  
"On your left," she ordered Spike, whirling to take on the next vamp. Back in the day five vamps in a week had seemed like overkill. I must be getting better, she thought, slamming her fist into her attacker's nose, feeling and hearing the cartilage snap. This isn't even winding me.  
  
The same could not be said for Spike. Glancing away from her opponent more than would have strictly been considered wise, she decided he wasn't moving so great. Not as recovered as he wanted them to think: just playing tough. What a surprise. Of course, Spike playing tough was still pretty deadly. With an expression of calculated disdain he swung the axe in an erratic circle, dismembering the heads of two attacking vampires and staking a third. Neat, Buffy thought, staking her own opponent and throwing the next vamp, a bearded, stockbroker type, against the side of the police car with a sharp kick. She had the bearded vamp pinned against the hood, and was about to drive her raised stake through his heart when she realized he was the last vamp standing and she still needed information.  
  
"So," she said, conversationally, slamming her knee into her captive's groin, "let's talk."  
  
The stockbroker struggled upright and shook his head, staring over her shoulder at Spike. "I'm not a traitor."  
  
"No. You're very loyal. Good for you," Buffy nodded, and drove her stake into her captive's stomach. "Now tell me who's responsible for all this." Which had seemed like a cool and tough move in her mind, but when the creature's cold blood began to leak over her hand she had to fight the urge to wipe it on her jeans.  
  
Groaning in pain, the vamp sagged against the car, hands modestly crossed over his wound. The bearded vamp still addressed Spike, who looked fascinated by the Slayer's interrogation methods. "It's not too late for you to take part in the victory. Kill the Slayer and join us," the stockbroker droned.  
  
"Not bloody likely," Spike snorted. Buffy felt an unexpected flash of pride at his nonchalant loyalty.  
  
"Answer the question," Buffy demanded. She raised the stake, slick now with blood. "Or do you want me to stab you some more?"  
  
Blood oozing through his fingers, the vampire shivered and shook his head.  
  
"Judas leads us through the weeks of Thead since William the Bloody was too weak to hear the truth in our mistress' song," the vamp hissed reluctantly, and shifted his narrow eyes back to Spike. "He will punish you for your betrayal of our sire. Your wrinkly friend was only the beginning."  
  
He meant Clem, Buffy realized with horror, even as new questions began gathering like storm clouds in her mind. Where can I find this Judas? What the hell is a Thead? Why would anybody follow one of Drusilla's demented visions in the first place? They must have known she would stop them, so what was the point? But before she had the chance to open her mouth, Spike had stepped in close. Did he have a question? No, Buffy realized too late. Questions were only for people with some modicum of self control. Spike, always the antithesis of patience, lunged in and swept their informant's head off with a single sweep of his broad, hungry axe. The Slayer watched with dismay as the vamp's head exploded to dust as it hit the ground. Wearing the twisted, self-satisfied smirk she had always loathed, Spike ran his thumb along the blade's edge as though admiring its sharpness.  
  
"I wasn't done with him!" she objected into the cold night air. Her voice sounded loud and distant as though it belonged to somebody else.  
  
"Books, dreams, weeks of bloody Thead. There was nothing left to get from him, Slayer," Spike growled back. At that moment it didn't matter that he wasn't angry with her. All he needed was a focus, someone to throw his fury at. Fury that Clem was dead and it was all his fault. Again. Even with the bloody soul he was bollixing everything up.  
  
"We're done when I say we're done. And you might want to keep a leash on that temper of yours. Bad things tend to happen when you loose it," Buffy snapped, reminding them both of his crimes.  
  
She waited for him to flinch or show some sign of shame, but all Spike did was glare, nose to nose with her, radiating violent anger. This was point where he would escalate, Buffy thought, her grip tightening on the stake in her hand. If he made a move she was perfectly willing to dust the last vampire in the street. Instead Spike stepped back, cocked his head, and shrugged.  
  
The demon wanted to slam her head into a wall and watch that self-righteous look slide from her eyes, while the soul longed to fall to his knees and beg for absolution. Obstinately, Spike was determined to do neither.  
  
"I'm sorry I killed your vamp," he said, the apology not quite ruined by his stunned expression that he was making it in the first place. His wide blue eyes met her own, annoyingly sincere.  
  
Oh not fair, Buffy decided. She hadn't been prepared for him to cave so soon.  
  
"I don't need you to be sorry. I need you to stop acting like a sociopath," Buffy snapped.  
  
Scowling, she turned away from him and went to check on the cop still trapped inside his patrol car. Forcing open the locked door she found the body, limp and empty, held up only by his seatbelt.  
  
"How's our boy?" Spike asked with grudging concern.  
  
"He's dead," Buffy said, surveying the corpse with professional detachment. She could be a doctor or a coroner or a murderer, she thought, mentally listing off exciting possibilities for her future career.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
"Are you sure about this?" Spike asked, laying one long fingered hand on his crypt door. He was being a good puppy and not asking all the questions skimming through his mind. Didn't ask, why here? What do you expect to find? Because she was all terse and businesslike and still pissed about him offing their informant in a typical bout of short temperedness. Even the soul couldn't bring him to regret that brush with cruelty, sodding fledgling bastard deserved it.  
  
"Oh yeah. I'm one with the readiness," she said grimly.  
  
He pushed open the door. The inside of the crypt was about ten times more disgusting than Dawn's description had led Buffy to believe. Of course, it had been a week, so decomposition was in full force. The two crept slowly into the dim room, their shoes sliding on the gore covered stone floor. Before she had scoped out even half of the crypt, Buffy's chest began to burn with the effort of not inhaling. Unrepentantly, she envied Spike's empty lungs  
  
What if my snazzy Slayer intuition's wrong, she wondered. What if Judas wasn't here and they were subjecting themselves to this wretched murder scene for nothing? Skirting around a stiff, maggot-ridden hand, Buffy put her own hand to her mouth, still horrified with all she had seen. Horrified by her ability to still be horrified.  
  
"Sometimes I wish we still had a little magic," Buffy whispered, creeping back to where Spike stood, stunned and motionless in the center of the crypt. Once upon a time Willow could have thrown some salt on the ground and cleaned this whole place up. Feeling like a wimp, Buffy trained her eyes on Spike's ugly paisley shirt rather than look at the devastation around them.  
  
Is that what you wish, love, Spike thought bitterly. I wish Clem wasn't spread like jam all over my floor. I wish I could have gotten Dru back to Europe. I wish this wasn't happening. Too bad really, because he used to love a bit of chaos. Without the soul this would have been right up his alley.  
  
Silently Spike cocked his head at the hole leading to the lower level of the crypt. Hand still uselessly covering her mouth, Buffy nodded. Time to check downstairs.  
  
Dust and death and madness, Spike was sure he could smell it all in the air as they entered the lower level of the crypt. In the center of the room, sitting among the torn sheets and ripped stuffing that had once been his bed, sat a beautiful young man, all auburn hair and long black eye lashes. Pretty, Spike conceded. Pretty statutory. Dru's effete little fledgling couldn't be more than fifteen or so. Did she kill you right away, he wondered, or did she play our games with you first?  
  
"I expected you sooner," Judas complained, his voice childish and petulant. He wasn't in game face, but Buffy could feel the taint of unnatural death rolling off of him in waves.  
  
"Well, here we are now," Buffy shrugged, too tired for banter. Dru's little pet reminded her of the Anointed One, soft and calm and irritatingly childlike. Judas my ass, she thought, taking in his apple cheeks, and the faint freckles decorating the bridge of his nose. This kid's mother had named him something preppy like Brad, or Justin.  
  
"Had a bit of a party in my place," Spike observed dryly. He remembered this, the quiet repartee with your opponent before ripping his lungs out. Was this what Clem had to sit through? Maybe it had been a quick death, lacking in hours of pointless quipping, but Spike doubted it.  
  
"I was looking for you," Judas said. "But you were hiding behind your Slayer. Drusilla thought you would kill the Chosen One. She thought you would drink the blood of the sacrifice and lead us to glory."  
  
"Dru had a lot of inane ideas," Spike said in the same slow, dangerous voice. Hearing the anger hidden in his tone Buffy was glad she had taken the axe away from him, leaving the blond vampire weaponless and scowling beside her. Why? Because she was afraid he would kill Dru's little spawn? That was what they came for, she reminded herself, shifting the axe in her hands.  
  
"I'm going to kill you," Buffy said factually. "Would you like to put up some kind of fight?" She hoped he did because loping off the heads of innocent looking kids didn't fit neatly into the heroic job description. Judas fixed her with his happy, stoned expression and awkwardly clambered to his feet like a child - like someone who's body was growing too fast for his coordination to keep up. But you'll never grow, never change Buffy thought, not even if I let you live.  
  
"I'm not going to fight you," he whispered with his innocent red mouth, leaning in close like a little boy with a secret. Too close, Buffy thought vaguely. Definitely invading personal space here. She could smell his dead, formaldehyde odor over the general, cloying reek of decay that permeated Spike's crypt.  
  
"Why not?" she whispered back, for no good reason she could think of.  
  
She noticed there were little flecks of gold in his irises. Such very pretty eyes. When she was young her father used to take her swimming in a lake that same shade of bluish green. Dawn would have to wear fluorescent yellow water wings because she was the baby, but Buffy could swim all the way out to the center of the lake, so far away she couldn't even hear Dawn's high pitched complaints. Of course that was a lie, because Dawn didn't exit, at least not as her sister, when Buffy was a child, and maybe her father had never taken her to that lake. Maybe the monks had made it all up and she had never even seen a lake. Maybe real lakes weren't actually the color of Judas's eyes. She wondered if she could go swimming in those irises.  
  
"Poor Slayer, you are overwhelmed by the Massacre, but my followers and I are like drops of rain before the storm. When we are gone the waters will rise and sweep away all those you seek to protect. Once you vanquish us the rivers will open to your door to destruction," Judas intoned, his gaze slipping hungrily from the Slayer's eyes, down her neck. Buffy's own eyes were uncaring and glazed. Spike looked from Judas to the Slayer and realized he was going to have to do something mildly heroic.  
  
With the flat of his hand Spike delivered one hard smack upside the fledgling's head. "You're mixing your metaphors," he chastised. This prat was his replacement? If anybody needed it, here was proof Angelus had driven Drusilla out of her sodding skull.  
  
Buffy shook her head as though trying to clear it. "Thrall. Was that thrall?" she demanded. Spike looked dubious and shook his head. Okay, she agreed. Probably not. Probably just exhaustion from six endless nights of slaying. And I'm supposed to save the world, she thought, tightening her grip on the axe. That should help the kids sleep at night.  
  
Blood poured think and red from the well of Judas's ear, tricking down his neck. Biting his lip in pain, the young vampire looked like he was going to cry, but Buffy's fling with compassion was over.  
  
Pursing his mouth the vamp tried again in his sing-song voice. "What comes after me will break you, Slayer. The end-"  
  
"Is neigh?" Spike guessed, lighting a cigarette with an annoyed flick of his lighter. "Can we get on with this?"  
  
Buffy decided they really, really could. With one quick swing she severed the boy's head from his body, feeling an alarming amount of nothing as his ashes scattered across the floor.  
  
"Well, that was easy," she said into the awkward silence, trusting that Willow was right, that the Massacre was indeed over.  
  
"Was it?" Spike asked, looking down at his decimated belongings: burnt books, broken stereo, cracked Victorian chair. These were all the little props he'd assembled to build a life here. That was your first mistake, you wanker, he berated himself. You're dead.  
  
Buffy closed her eyes against the reek of decay wafting down from the crypt and tried not to think about the death toll of the past week. Spike was right, with over a hundred dead, a hundred people she hadn't been able to help, the Massacre hadn't been easy at all. But since when did Spike care about the human mortality rate? Since never, and he probably still didn't. But Drusilla was gone, and she was pretty sure he cared about that. And Clem, gentle, benign Clem who had looked out for Dawn and shared bread recipes and deserved better than this for their friendship.  
  
"Should we hold a funeral for Clem?" she wondered out loud.  
  
He doesn't need a funeral, pet. He needs a bloody cleaning crew, but Spike didn't say that. Instead he shrugged to indicate his lack of opinion on the topic, and tried to remember the precise word to describe how he felt. Guilt, he realized. Goody for me. Sitting down on the ruins of his bed Spike tried to imagine what he was going to do next.  
  
Buffy watched him shuffle his sneakers though the dust, trying to scrape off the gore from the rubber soles. What would he do now? She supposed he could clean out the crypt - it had survived worse, or, more accurately, it had been destroyed more. The crypt would survive. Spike on the other hand looked hopeless and lost, as though he had been shipwrecked on an unknown island.  
  
It threw Buffy to see his cruel veneer crack, so she said "Are you coming home where I can keep an eye on you, or do you want to stay in the crypt?  
  
Running his fingers through errant, curling hair, Spike fixed her with a dubious look. Those were his options: life with Clem's corpse or life with Buffy? Each sounded equally awful. His demon snarled at the idea of being locked up inside the Slayer's suburban home, and the soul curled up in the pit of his stomach, tired and heavy as lead and just about as useful for making decisions.  
  
"I'm going with you," he said, choosing what he hoped was the lesser of two evils.  
  
Well, that's just great, Buffy thought, suddenly regretting the offer. Spike stood, awkwardly bemused, with his hands hanging uselessly at his sides. He looked ancient and immobile as a forgotten statue. For a moment she doubted he would go with her after all, but when she moved towards the tunnel entrance, he followed like a ghostly, silent shadow, chip free and dangerous behind her. At least Dawn would be happy, Buffy supposed, brushing her fingers against the damp stone wall. She wished she had brought a flashlight, even though she knew the way home well enough in the dark. Even more than that she wished she didn't have to go home and un- impress Xander, again, with her lack of decision making skills. Maybe if she had done her homework and actually read the Slayer Handbook she would know how to avoid these murky moral situations by now. Then again, probably not.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
End Part II  
  
**And I would like to apologize to any and all for the ridiculous amount of time it took for me to get this chapter posted. 


	16. 

World's Edge  
  
Part Three: Insomnia  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
I am tired of tears and laughter.  
  
And men that laugh and weep;  
  
Of what may come hereafter  
  
For men that sow to reap;  
  
I am weary of days and hours,  
  
Blown buds of barren flowers,  
  
Desires and dreams and powers  
  
And everything but sleep.  
  
The Garden of Proserpine, Algernon Charles Swinburne  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
"I miss Clem," Dawn confessed, her sword carving an unsteady arc through the air that matched the warble in her voice. She was not going to cry. Crying during training was for wimps and she was determined to be tough like Buffy, like Spike.  
  
"Watch your elbow," Spike ordered from where he lounged on the back porch, dressed again in his familiar array of black. One of his white hands stubbed out his cigarette in the cracked bowl Buffy had designated as an ashtray while the other pet the cat sprawled across his knees. The kitten wasn't bothered by the loud sound of hammering booming from the Summers' home, but Dawn flinched a little at every strike.  
  
Even if Xander's fit of home improvement was making her a mite nervous, Spike thought, there was no excuse for the god-awful display of incompetence she was exhibiting on the lawn. He and Dinner watched with concern as the blade made another rickety pass. Apparently unimpressed, the kitten yawned, displaying healthy pink gums and sharp white teeth, before tucking her nose between her paws and falling asleep.  
  
Sorry if I'm boring you, Dawn thought irritably. It was going to be a bad day. All the days since she came back from the crypt had been bad. And she wasn't sleeping so well, as in at all. When Buffy had horrible nightmares it was because she was all chosen and connected to some great power. When Dawn had bad dreams it was just her fears running rampant in her subconscious.  
  
"Does it ever get any easier?" she asked, letting the point of the weapon fall until it was resting on the dying lawn.  
  
"Not if you don't practice," Spike said in the slow, measured voice he used when he was irritated with her, which he was. He was tired of talking about Clem, tired of remembering the stench of his friend decaying in the crypt. In the few days since he had thawed out, all Dawn wanted to do was whine to him about how sad she was, as though sorrow was some strange new discovery she had made. Spike was torn, as always, between the two poles. The demon was disgusted by his weakness, while the soul squirmed with guilt for how little he actually missed Clem. Weary of his own manic moments, Spike wished both twittering voices would shut the hell up, and the Bit was more than welcome to join them in silence.  
  
"I hate you," Dawn said with sullen teenage petulance, her eyes darkening with tears. Now she thought he was evil, evil for sitting there not caring that Clem was dead. Could he be evil with the soul?  
  
"You don't hate me," Spike sighed, resigning himself to the conversation. "Sit down, love. Have a kitty." He passed her Dinner, who curled happily in Dawn's arms, a boneless, purring mass. Awkwardly, Dawn stood before him, not wanting to sit, not wanting to stand, looking at the kitten because she didn't know what else to do with herself.  
  
Xander's hammering, the sharp sound of nails being driven into wood, echoed again through the air. This time Dinner was startled, and Dawn winced as the kitten's wicked claws punctured her jacket and possibly her flesh. Biting her lip she tried to sooth the kitty. She wished someone would bother to sooth her.  
  
"I think Xander's overreacting," Dawn complained. "It's not like you're going to kill us in our sleep." At least she hoped not.  
  
Spike shrugged, his eyes dark and unreadable in the indifferent afternoon sunlight. "It's up to your sis really. It's her house, isn't it?"  
  
"Yeah. It's her house. I just live here," Dawn said moodily, sitting next to him on the porch step.  
  
Spike tried to remember how he had felt when his father died, well over a century ago, when he was still alive. He could recall the bitter cold numbing his fingers at the funeral, his ill-fitting wool coat unbearably tight across his shoulders. What had he been? Thirteen years old? Something like that, growing so fast nothing ever seemed to fit. Lighting another cigarette, Spike thought it was strange he could remember such random minutia but couldn't recall weeping at the funeral. Although he must have, overly sensitive, Goethe reading ponce that he had been.  
  
Spike sighed, exhaling a small cloud of smoke, which made Dawn wrinkle her nose and give a melodramatic cough to remind him she had healthy, working lungs and he was probably giving her cancer from second hand smoke. Scowling he crushed out the cigarette. "Yeah, I miss Clem," he admitted as though confessing a secret. "But the longer you live the more people you loose, Dawn. Death is just something you get used to over time. The intensity fades."  
  
"Not for me," Dawn insisted, kissing the top of the kitten's head. She expected him to play the adult and tell her she was wrong - that she would understand when she was older.  
  
"Maybe not," Spike conceded. He was amazed by Dawn's eternal innocence in the face of the horrors the Hellmouth threw their way: demons and gods, the deaths of her mother, Buffy, and Tara in short succession. "Maybe not for you." But if not, he thought, it was going to be a long winter.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
Upstairs, Buffy lounged on her sister's bed, trying not to be amused by Xander, who was attempting to install a lock on the inside of Dawn's door with his one good hand. To give him credit, he'd done a great job putting the lock in Buffy's own bedroom with minimal swearing. (And of course he would put the lock in her room first. Xander, always overprotective of her anyway, now combined with lethal boredom now that his arm was broken, would probably weld her into a chastity belt if he'd thought of it.) Now though, his initial energy spent, screwing two more ity bity locks into the Dawn and Willow's doorframes seemed about as realistic as scaling Mt. Vesuvius. As she watched, the little pieces of the lock fell between his numb fingers, raining down on the carpeting, Buffy hoped he wasn't going to ask her to help him.  
  
"One armed guy could use some help here, Buffy," Xander said, with the furrowed brow of the eternally frustrated.  
  
"Look, if you want to storm through the house ruining the molding, I won't stop you. But I'm not going to pitch in on this little project. I know you're worried about Spike's chip free state, but I think you're overreacting," Buffy said, taking the hammer from Xander before he had a chance to slam it into a wall in a display of macho frustration.  
  
"I know what you think," Xander nodded emphatically. "I have come to terms with the fact that your thoughts and my thoughts are never going to be as one on this particular issue. But I'm not asking you to stake the guy. All I'm saying is a little precaution might be in order." There, Xander thought, that sounded reasonable, didn't it? Reasonable to the insane, which Buffy clearly was at this point.  
  
Buffy knelt down on the floor and gathered up all the little metal screws and nails, one by one as though she were picking strawberries. In some ways (small ways that made her question her own sanity per square foot) she was almost relieved the chip was out because now the question of Spike's identity as a legitimate reformed guy vs. bloodthirsty psycho killer would be revealed and she could stop trying to make up her own mind on the subject. Buffy was hoping for the former because if not there was a sociopath sleeping in the basement, and that tended to be the sort of thing Child Protective Services frowned on.  
  
"Are you sure this is about Spike? You and the big anger I mean? Are you sure you're not upset about Anya?"  
  
Xander paced up and down Dawn's room, bursting with pent energy.  
  
"You think I don't see what you're doing here but I see it: the bait and switch with the demon ex's. Let me take this moment to point out that even with the return to vengeance, Anya still won't have a craving for warm blood O'Dawn as a midnight snack," Xander snapped, and then resented it. He wasn't mad at Buffy. He didn't want to take his anger out on her. There was a word for this, Anya read it in a book once and told him all about it while he didn't listen. Displacement? Subplacement? Willow would know.  
  
Buffy stood, letting all the metal bits in her hands trickle from one hand to the other. Standing there in old jeans, her hair falling out of its knot, she looked not at all like a hero. She just looked like an old friend, somebody he could tell his mundane little problems to, somebody he wanted to protect.  
  
"I think I'm still in love with her," he confessed, because when Buffy looked at him like that he wanted to tell her everything in the hopes that she could fix it. "I think I made a mistake with the calling off the wedding, but maybe I didn't. See my problem? Can you even marry a demon?"  
  
Buffy smiled sadly and looked prepared to say something wise. "Then I think you need to talk to her."  
  
Defeated, Xander collapsed into a chair and covered his eyes with his good hand. That was it? That was her wisdom? Maybe he needed to call Giles who was old and had actual wisdom and was.single. Maybe not. Maybe he just needed to focus on the task at hand.  
  
"Sure," Xander agreed reluctantly. "I'll talk to her after we secure your perimeters."  
  
At least he was honest, Buffy thought. Xander was probably worried about her perimeters more than anything. What's next, she almost asked. An armed guard at her bedroom door? But no way was she going to put that idea in his head when he was in his Big Brother is Watching You groove. Xander as a Watcher, now that she could almost see.  
  
"If I help you do this you realize it's only to humor you," she warned.  
  
"Yes! I long to be humored!" Xander exclaimed, happily divesting himself of that last lingering shred of dignity.  
  
Turning the hammer over in her hands, Buffy wondered what she was afraid of. That she would ruin the molding? That Spike would be insulted? No, she wasn't worried about the feelings of their local sexual predator. Former sexual predator? Sure she thought he was safe now with the soul, but she'd thought he was relatively safe before. Maybe she did need Xander to watch her back. Relying on her own judgment had turned out so magnificently awful the last time.  
  
"Okay," she agreed. "Let's batten down the hatches."  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
Giles spent a lot of time not calling Buffy. Much time was wasted looking at the phone, examining it like some ancient artifact he could not quite comprehend. It had been good of Buffy, of course, to call him, tell him about the Massacre, assure him they were all alright, but now he had to keep squelching the urge to ring her up and impart fatherly advise. Keep your wrists straight when you throw a punch, get enough sleep, don't keep demons in the house.  
  
Damn it he was going to call because. because. well he didn't really need a reason. Dropping his spectacles on the table he reached for the phone. Each ring that someone didn't pick up his heart skipped in an odd pattern and he invented awful reasons as to why they couldn't answer the phone. First ring: Emils demon eating Willow in the park. Second ring: Buffy rushing Xander to the hospital because of critical blood loss. Third ring: Dawn - luckily someone picked up on the third ring and he didn't have to ponder the dastardly things that could be befalling Dawn at that moment.  
  
"What?" a harsh voice growled on the other side of the line. Phone edict in the Summers house had eroded significantly since Spike had moved in.  
  
"Oh. Spike." Giles didn't bother hiding the disappointment in his voice. There was really nothing he wished to discuss with the vampire. "How, er, how are we doing? With the portents I mean?"  
  
"Two down, one to go," the Spike shrugged. How was it supposed to be going? "Dru's dead. Clem's dead. We're all having a grand old time."  
  
Not for the first time, Spike noticed that guilt made him snappish. Now that he'd had time to think about it, choosing Xander's life over Drusilla's felt like a mistake. Living the moment again and again in his mind he could not fathom making the same judgment a second time. Stupid soul induced snap decision. And if he'd gone along with Dru's silly massacre Clem would still be alive instead of rotting all over the inside of the crypt. Other people would have died of course, but considering the ramifications of his actions had always given Spike a headache.  
  
"Well," Giles fumbled, "that's, er, perhaps I should talk to Buffy."  
  
"Please do," Spike said. He walked into the living room where Buffy, Willow, and Dawn lounged, vapidly gazing at the TV. "Your Watcher wants to talk with you," he told the Slayer, holding out the phone.  
  
For a moment, Buffy thought he was having a Bob Dole moment. Then she realized her meant her other Watcher. Her real Watcher. Giles.  
  
"Hi," she said into the phone.  
  
"The thought occurs, I never congratulated you on vanquishing the second portent" Giles said, deciding it was better to talk shop at first rather than lecture her. She was an adult. He was not her father, even so, it was terribly tempting to slide into his Watcher voice and try to tell her what to do. The truth was she had never listened to him anyway.  
  
Giles's voice over the phone sounded so dear and calm it made Buffy want to cry. Please come back, she wanted to say. Everything here is tense and scary and I'm tired of saving the world all the time. Sometimes I don't even like the world. It has murders, and tax fraud, and sexism, and dictatorships. Why do I have to be the girl who defends that? Instead she said, "Oh yeah, I vanquished. If I vanquish anymore I get the free tee shirt. Or, you know, the end of the word. Lucky me."  
  
"I see some of Spike's cynicism has worn off on you." Giles's tone was disapproving.  
  
"I'm pretty sure I've always been like this," Buffy sighed. She knew she was disappointing Giles again. It had been funny in high school to count how many times she could make him exhale loudly and clean his glasses in frustration, but now it just engendered Big Guilt.  
  
"How is he now? Without the chip?" Giles asked, sliding against his will into the deep waters of paternal concern. It would be on his conscious if Spike did anything to harm Buffy and her friends. He was the one who opened the door so to speak, and invite the vampire back into the Slayer's inner circle. Many hours of his life had been wasted over the past few months trying to figure out what he had been thinking when he put Willow in Spike's custody.  
  
Buffy glanced over her shoulder towards Dawn, Spike, and Willow in front of the TV and slipped surreptitiously into the kitchen.  
  
"Pretty much the same," she admitted. "He helps Dawn with her homework and hasn't eaten anyone, so I guess we're okay. Weird, but okay."  
  
"With her homework?" Giles repeated. He allowed himself a moment to ponder whether that would be a help or a hindrance to Dawn's educational success.  
  
"Soul," Buffy reminded them both, which had become her explanation for most of Spike's behavior lately.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
After a few weeks they had all settled into steady rhythm. Unfortunately for Spike, that rhythm did not involve sleeping in. With a growl Spike pulled the Hello Kitty pillow over his face and cursed his predatory hearing. "Quiet down! You're waking the fucking dead!" he wanted to shout. But it was Buffy's house and he supposed if she wanted to bang every cupboard and door in the entire sodding house the self-righteous bitch could do just that.  
  
The door creaked open and Dawn clattered quietly into the basement. She wasn't supposed to be down here, but there she was anyway, peering at him over the wooden rail of the stairs. So he had only been there a couple of weeks, Dawn thought, but he should have done something to make the room look more like a home and less like a basement with their old guest cot set up and some candles and black clothes strewn around.  
  
Spike did a quick inventory to make sure all essential parts were covered from Dawn's prying eyes. During his fit of home improvement, Xander had thoughtfully installed a lock on the outside of the basement door in case they ever needed to keep the demon in (which to Spike's surprise nobody had used.) Mornings like this, the groggy vampire wished the carpenter had installed a lock on the inside of the basement to keep curious ex-keys out.  
  
"I missed the bus," Dawn confessed.  
  
"What a shock," he grumbled, which it wasn't. The Bit was about as good at early mornings as he was.  
  
Petulantly, Dawn stuck her tongue out at the pile of blankets, which was safe since he couldn't see her. She was pretty sure he couldn't see her. As far as she could tell, the only thing paying attention to her right now was Dinner. The harsh light shining from the kitchen made the cat's eyes reflect back at Dawn like two silver coins.  
  
"Can you give me a ride?" she begged in a coercive, little voice. "Please?"  
  
"Do I really have an option?" Spike asked the basement ceiling.  
  
"I could stay home with you," Dawn suggested. Bending down, she tapped her fingers along the wooden step in the hope of getting the kitten's attention.  
  
Throwing his pillow towards the washer, Spike finally sat up looking thoroughly annoyed in the gloamy basement. "Go away," he ordered, because Buffy would stake him for sure if he got dressed in front of Dawn's virgin eyes. Upset by his sudden movement, Dinner stretched languidly and looked from the vampire to the human and back, as though attempting to decide which would be more likely to feed her.  
  
Dawn gave up her tapping and retreated up the stairs, not sure if she was getting a ride or not. Finally reaching a decision, Dinner scrambled out of Spike's bed and tore up the stairs, sliding into the kitchen moments before Dawn closed the basement door. She got the cat, Dawn thought. At least that was something.  
  
In the kitchen five minutes later Buffy was handing Spike a steaming mug of blood.  
  
"I kind of surpassed warm and went strait to hot," she apologized. There had to be some syndrome, a name for people who couldn't even work a microwave properly.  
  
"Oh," he said, accepting the cup. Well, this was nice. He hated it when Buffy did nice things. It confused the hell out of him.  
  
"Thanks for taking Dawn to school," she said, nibbling the piece of toast that was her own attempt at breakfast. Eyes blurry, hair curling every which way, it was obvious the vampire was not adjusting well to diurnal life, which was fine. He'd apparently adjusted to the soul easy enough. It was only fare that he struggle with something, Buffy thought.  
  
"Not a problem," he shrugged. Who needed sleep if the Slayer was going to scare him awake with her kindness? Besides he owed her something for letting him crash in the basement. "It's not like I'm paying rent. Should I be paying rent?" Spike was suddenly alarmed. It had taken him three weeks to come up with that idea.  
  
"Nope," Buffy smiled, amused by the shadow of concern that fell across his face. "The mortgage is beyond covered by the Council, and it's not like you eat anything. At least not anything I'm going to buy." She wrinkled her nose, and slid the strap of her satchel over her shoulder.  
  
Dawn, obedient to the kitten's wishes, had fed Dinner and was eating her own breakfast at the counter. As she devoured her corn flakes, she was thoroughly amused by the exchange between her sister and Spike. Mornings were her favorite part of the day, the only time when they were all together for a little greet and snark before separating out into their lives. Almost all together.  
  
"Where's Willow?" she asked around a mouthful of cereal.  
  
"Here!" Willow called, rushing into the room, long black sleeves floating behind her, hair still wet from the shower. Living in the crypt Spike had missed the bouquet of freshly washed Willow.  
  
"Okay. I'm here. I'm ready. Are we late?"  
  
"Always," Buffy shrugged, finishing off her toast and brushing the crumbs from her coat.  
  
"You should eat something," Spike told the witch, sipping at his too hot blood. He hated the soul and the paternal things it made him say. Maybe it would be best to stop talking for a few centuries, prevent those embarrassing looks of surprise.  
  
"I'll grab something on the way," Willow promised, oddly touched by the vampire's concern.  
  
Examining her dark dress and black fishnets up and down, Spike wondered when she was going to stop dressing like the Queen of the Damned. She was sad, and she felt guilty, and that was all very fine and well, but other people's angst had always annoyed him. It was time she bloody well got over it and spared them all.  
  
"That's a lovely frock you've got on, pet," he complimented her cruelly. "Dru had one just like it."  
  
Willow did the forehead crinkle of angry confusion while behind her Buffy worked to hide a smile.  
  
"I always thought Drusilla had wonderful taste," Willow lied, trying to preserve some dignity. Pointedly she turned her back on the vampire and his inappropriate sense of humor to face her favorite ex-key.  
  
"Have a good day at school, Dawnie," Willow smiled. Even the black lipstick and dark eyeliner couldn't mask Willow's shining grin.  
  
"I'd have a better day if I didn't have to go to school," Dawn complained, vaguely hopeful Spike wouldn't force her to go, but he probably would. Since he came back with the soul he had been exhibiting strangely responsible tendencies.  
  
"No! School is fun. School is learning. You get books and tests and," suddenly Willow seemed to realize this argument wasn't going to motivate anybody who wasn't as geeky as she was. "Just go anyway," Willow lamely concluded her pep talk as she walked out the back door.  
  
Buffy tried not to laugh and failed. Goth queen or not, Willow was still responsibility girl when it came to school. Thank god some things didn't change, she thought as she followed Willow out the door. Then she paused and focused on Spike again and it was all with the serious.  
  
"When you take Dawn to school, please pretend that you believe in the laws governing vehicular behavior," Buffy demanded in her Slayer Knows Best tone.  
  
"Yes, mom," Spike promised. He was tempted to point out he had been driving longer than she had been alive, but then he'd also been in more accidents than Evil Knievel, so it wouldn't have been the most effective argument.  
  
Buffy closed the door behind her and Spike drained the rest of the scalding blood in one, painful gulp. Might as well get on with the frelling day now that he was up.  
  
"Get your helmet, Bit," he said. Feeling thoroughly housetrained, he washed out his mug and placed it in the dish rack.  
  
Dawn sighed and dropped her dishes into the sink as her hopes at truancy were dashed.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
December in Sunnydale was kind of a joke. The nights were cold, but the day were pale and warm with hard, tired sunlight reluctantly illuminating the streets and the plastic Santas standing in snow-free yards. Every morning Buffy walked by them on her way to school, trying to decide if they were deliberately ironic or not.  
  
School wasn't really at the top of the Slayer's priority list that winter. She went daily - pretty much, but the tide of motivation was at low ebb. When would she ever have the chance to use trigonometry in the real world? Any image of life beyond slaying was, well, death. And she was fine with that. Instead of being afraid of dying, the thought made her kind of nostalgic. Which was yet another thing her friends didn't need to know. When her mind wandered during class she wondered why Willow assumed her soul would be damned to a hell dimension anyway.  
  
"Buffy, what do you think Browning is trying to tell his audience with Proferia's Lover?"  
  
Oh. Right. Class. Squirming a little in the plastic seat she remembered how much she hated talking in class. It was high school all over again, only with bigger words. And Buffy was still hating poetry. It all sounded like "Bliddy bliddy blah" to her. Spike had read some of it out loud last night, and listening to him she had wanted to laugh at the image: big boots, evil afterglow, reading Browning in her living room. Spike's recitation didn't illuminate the subtle meanings of Victorian poetry, but she did notice his accent changed so he sounded like an actor on Masterpiece Theatre. She wondered if that was how he spoke when he was alive.  
  
"Ms. Summers?"  
  
"What? Oh. I think Browning is saying love isn't an absolute good. Porphyria's Lover is, well, in love. But that does make him less demented, or purify him. He kills her so he can rape her, so he can possess her. And because he loves her, and we all know you aren't supposed to kill people you love, he convinces himself he's doing what she wants. In his mind he's saving her."  
  
"That's an intriguing comment. All the reader is allowed to see is what the murderer believes happened. Tell me, Ms. Summers, what do you think Browning was attempting to accomplish with his use of an unreliable narrator?" professor Smith asked as the merciful bell rang. "I want to finish up this conversation tomorrow. Please remember your essays are due next Wednesday; they will be 40% of your total grade. Ideally you should have started writing them by now. Class dismissed."  
  
As she rose to her feet Buffy tried to decide if the word "intriguing" had positive or negative connotations. For the sake of her GPA she really hoped it was positive.  
  
"Buffy?" someone asked at her shoulder.  
  
"What? Yes," she confirmed awkwardly to the dark eyed, dark haired boy who knew her name, but of course she couldn't remember his.  
  
"Austin," he supplied. "My name, I mean. It's Austin. You, uh, seem to be really good at the whole poetry interpretation thing and I'm exceedingly, well, not. I was kind of hoping we could go over some of Browning's themes together. Before the final."  
  
So very transparent, Buffy thought. But cute boys deserved to be cut some slack.  
  
"I'm meeting a friend of mine for coffee right now," Buffy hedged. Coffee with my friend who tried to destroy the world. After that I'm going over sword techniques with a vampire, after which I will be making dinner for my sister who was created by some monks. Then it's off to patrol the cemeteries to kill the living dead. No time for a normal life on that agenda.  
  
"Do you drink coffee?" she asked because, well, he was breathing. Cute and breathing. When was the last time she had experienced that combination? Spending some time with normal people might not be so bad for a change.  
  
"I have a certain fondness for the beverage," Austin admitted.  
  
"Then you should come along," Buffy decided. "Willow won't mind if we talk poetry. She's always happy to be helpful with the knowledge." In Buffy's opinion Willow could use from recreational time away from prophecies and creatures that went bump in the night.  
  
"I don't want to impose," Austin said politely.  
  
Buffy laughed. "Trust me, I'm a tough girl to impose upon."  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
In Tara's opinion, Spike was going a little crazy with the money. New clothes, that was practical considering everything he owned was a little.gross by the time Judas was done making a mess of the crypt. But who needed six pairs of leather pants? Then there were the things even Tara's kindness couldn't justify: throwing knives for Dawn (as though Buffy didn't have enough of those lying around), an antique art deco cigarette case (Spike feeling nostalgic? That could only lead to bad things), an emerald necklace set with the seal of Astarte for Willow (which was pretty, really pretty, but not exactly necessary). And now this.  
  
"I should have brought a Polaroid," Spike muttered, preening uselessly in front of the uncooperative mirror. Buying a leather jacket to replace the duster was turning out to be harder than he had anticipated.  
  
"A bomber jacket?" Tara objected from where she stood, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, among racks of new smelling leather coats. "Y-you look like a stockbroker in the Hamptons." One of the small pleasures of being dead was that she got to say things she would never have had the nerve to when she was alive. Spike's glare was full of malice, which she blithely ignored. "I'm telling you: stockbroker. Or, or maybe a real estate agent."  
  
For her honesty Spike graced Tara with a condescending smirk. Why would he want her fashion advice anyway? She looked like a refugee from a sodding Renaissance fair with those long skirts and velvet peasant shirt.  
  
"Can you do something about the mirror, love?" he asked the ghost. If she was going to hover around and insult his sartorial taste, she could at least make herself useful.  
  
"I, uh, don't know what's wrong with the mirror," the shop girl said, blanching. Of course the stupid little bint would assume he was talking to her. It wasn't as though she could see the ghost standing next to him.  
  
"You don't have to talk out loud," Tara said helpfully. "I should be able to hear you if you just think really loud."  
  
"CAN YOU MAGIC UP A REFLECTION FOR ME, PET?" Was that loud enough for her? It felt loud.  
  
Tara touched her forehead and blinked back tears, as though she had bitten an exceptionally hot pepper. "M-maybe not that loud," she amended. "I can't give you a reflection. The sunlight? That was your gift. I can't do anything more for you. Well, I can do this." Tara waved her hand and the salesgirl wandered off.  
  
"Cute trick," Spike said, shrugging out of the jacket and looking around the store for something tougher. For a moment he considered a biker jacket, black with cruel silver spikes along the shoulders, but he could imagine Willow rolling her eyes and reminding him that punk was deader than he was. Not that he gave a shit about Red's opinion on the topic. Oh no, he told himself, you're as bad as can be. Finally he settled on another trench coat, three quarters length, more structured than his old duster, one that didn't look like it had been run over by a car. He had to change with the times after all.  
  
"That's it," Tara said. "It totally says reformed psycho-killer."  
  
"Great," Spike said unenthusiastically. He was less impressed by her endorsement than he was by its inside pocket, handy for his new cigarette case.  
  
"So, which of these do you think Dawn would like?" he asked the ghost, waving his hand vaguely at the rows of coats.  
  
Tara recognized the familiar gleam of maniacal over-consumption sparkling in his cold eyes. Vampires, she supposed, had never been famous for moderation. Whatever else he may have become, Spike was still a demon. The soul would never erase that.  
  
Tara tilted her head, considered for a moment, and then summoned one of the jackets from the rack with a graceful wave of her hand. It occurred to Spike that mind control of shop girls and public acts of magic weren't really mousy little Tara's style when she was alive. She had been all about order and balance; the flashy shit had been Willow's forte. He wanted to think about this more, but there was still a jacket floating two feet away from his nose and it was either take it or let the happy shoppers of Sunnydale mall witness the wonder of levitating apparel.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
"You can't be serious," Xander almost shouted.  
  
Walking to the Magic Box Xander had been all prepared to girt his - well whatever one was supposed to girt in preparation for battle, but then Anya had blindsided him with her latest batch of exciting news and it was all with the shouting again. Poor Dawn cowered in her chair, tugging her cardigan closer to her body for protection while Anya, who seemed to draw strength from his anger, feed off it, stood firm and defiant in the center of the store.  
  
"Of course I'm serious, Xander. It's been months and the shop still isn't put back together. Nobody comes in here anymore now that it reeks of the dark arts. I need money to live off of."  
  
"So you're going to, what? Sell the Magic Box to some developer who'll knock it down to build a Wall Mart or a celebrity themed restaurant?"  
  
Anya shrugged, "That's capitalism, Xander."  
  
"Yeah.well capitalism sucks." Perhaps not his wittiest comeback. In his mind, Xander composed a brief diatribe against the consolidation of the nations resources in a handful of mega-conglomerations that were crushing small stores and the entrepreneurial spirit out of the American landscape. But why bother? He was vastly familiar with Anya's brook no opposition look. So he sat down at the table and did his best impression of the Lincoln Memorial: cold, stoic, and heartless. It was hard to look heatless with his arm throbbing in its cast.  
  
"What are you going to do now?" Dawn asked, trying to imagine Anya without the magic shop. Then it occurred to her that the demon did have another vocation and she wished she could take the question back.  
  
"I'm going to England," Anya said decisively. "To wreak.justice, and possibly open a small apothecary shop. Giles and I are considering something in Hampstead Heath." Which was a lie. Giles didn't even know she was coming to London. Yet.  
  
Xander looked pained and wrapped his good hand around his cast. She felt an unexpected stirring of something resembling pity.  
  
"It's not like you can even fix the shop with your arm like that, Xander. And really it's not your responsibility. You didn't ruin it," Anya blurted out, and then resented her weakness. She wasn't the one who had dumped them into this awkward situation. He was. Him and his stupid running away.  
  
"Oh," Xander sagged against the research table. In his mind Anya would have forgiven him in some ephemeral future and they would return to the happy formula of sex and dating. Guess not, he thought. Hello gruesome reality.  
  
"When?" Dawn asked because Xander seemed to have lost word-forming ability.  
  
"Soon. Next week. I'll pay you if you want to help me pack the place up." Anya looked at Xander helpless and confused against the table. Still not as wounded as she had been when he walked out on her. She turned back towards Dawn. "You can tell your sister's vampire he's welcome to any of the books. Giles said its fine to leave them here."  
  
Xander's pained expression convinced her she hadn't lost her touch at vengeance after all.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
"How's your hand?" Buffy asked with awkward concern.  
  
Spike paused under one of the cemetery streetlamps and displayed his palm, its broad surface cracked and blistered in the shape of a cross. Bloody Xander's latest round of home improvements had involved soldering religious paraphernalia onto the doorknobs of Chez Summers. He hadn't been ready for that; Carpenter-boy had been verging on sanity regarding the living situation until Anya made up her mind to move to Merry Old.  
  
Buffy bit her lip and tried to decide who she was more annoyed with, Xander for his surreptitious use of Christian iconography, or Spike for kicking in the offending door, destroying the door, and the molding, and shattering one of her mother's antique lamps.  
  
"Been quiet," Spike said, closing his hand, hiding it in the pocket of his coat.  
  
"Too quiet," Buffy sighed, sweeping her eyes across the desolate cemetery. "Not a bad guy in sight."  
  
"Just as well. You'd best get home and study for that Psych test," Spike said, sounding ridiculously responsible before he was propelled face first into the dirt path by a translucent, slimy demon who hadn't gotten the memo that evil was laying low for a while.  
  
Spike rolled out of the way, hoping the gravel wasn't going to scar the new jacket, and let Buffy deal with the creature.  
  
"I don't even know why I bothered going back to school," Buffy complained, lunging forward, swinging her sword at the gelatinous, mucus-dripping demon. "I'm the Slayer. My career path is pretty much set. And, honestly, the slaughter of evil fiends is about the only thing I'm good at." The blade sliced neatly through the monster's torso, and Buffy watched with dismay as the wound healed seamlessly.  
  
"And you know this from your vast Doublemeat Palace experience?" Spike questioned, diving back into the fray, sliding a little in the monster's gooey trail.  
  
Sometimes Buffy wondered if he even know when he was being mean, or if it was only that nobody had ever introduced him to tact. Raising his crossbow Spike fired a bolt directly into the creature's head, which did remarkably little to slow it down. Buffy graced him with an eye roll, even as she scurried out of the demon's path. The thing swiveled its eyeless head and continued towards her at a steady, unconcerned pace.  
  
Spike stepped back to reload, an awkward process with his scalded hand. His mouth, as always, worked just fine.  
  
"You can do whatever you fancy. Sooner or later someone will get sick of Faith and take her out. Once that happens, a new Slayer's called to the Hellmouth and you can be on your merry way. Now that the chip's out I could do it for you if you like." To his surprise the idea of adding another Slayer to the list wasn't unappealing. Perhaps, he thought, the soul was defective after all.  
  
Buffy frowned, trying to filter out the vampire's homicidal prattle. There was something moving in the gelatinous creature's body, swimming slowly through its torso like a fish in a bowl. The demon moved to strike and she lunged, ramming the sword through its giving flesh, impaling the goldfish on the blade. Much to her relief, the whole demon dissolved into a smoldering pile of goo. Moving to stand beside her, Spike prodded the mound with the toe of his boot to assure himself it was dead. Then he took a moment to wipe steaming demon snot off his new boots against the edge of a tombstone.  
  
"You better be joking," she warned. "About killing Faith, I mean."  
  
"Yeah," he said, all injured looking. "Of course I am."  
  
They strolled slowly through the cemetery because - well - she really wasn't looking forward to cramming for her Psych final tomorrow. As Buffy walked she swung her sword in an idle ark, which Spike followed with vague interest, as though curious about whether she was going to turn and chop off his head.  
  
"Dawn's taking Clem's death really hard," she said, knowing even as she began she was going to regret this conversation.  
  
"Yeah," he agreed, not sure if he wanted to know where this conversation was going. He supposed he should be thrilled she was talking to him about something other than the end of the life as they knew it, but the days when they could tell each other their worldly concerns were long gone.  
  
Buffy glared at him, but plunged on anyway. "And now Anya's leaving."  
  
"Yeah." Eyes roaming over the cemetery, Spike found himself wishing for another monster to attack. Either that or Buffy could get to the point. What did he care about Anya's travel plans?  
  
"Look, oh monosyllabic one, I'm trying to have a conversation here."  
  
Spike paused to light a cigarette, hands cupped protectively around the flame. It was, Buffy thought, an oddly human gesture. Turning his head he exhaled a plume of smoke away from her.  
  
"I can see you are trying to talk about something. The problem is I can't tell about what."  
  
"Dawn," Buffy said with exaggerated patience.  
  
"Your sister," he supplied helpfully.  
  
"Very good."  
  
"All right then. What about the Bit?"  
  
"Would you mind not referring to my sister as though she's a snack food? Especially now that you can.snack. Again."  
  
Spike opened his mouth to object that she should know perfectly well he wasn't gong to hurt the brat. That she should trust him just a tad, but of course she shouldn't trust him at all, had no reason to. So he closed his mouth and puffed away in silence.  
  
"The thing about Dawn," Buffy said, back on track now and determined to get it over with. "Is that she sees her world as an ever collapsing circle of people. She freaks out when she loses anyone and she's lost, well, a lot. We all have."  
  
Spike nodded, looking politely bored by this lecture.  
  
"So I want to know if you're going to be around. I need to know if somebody else is going to walk out on her because I don't know how much more she can take."  
  
He was going to say, "Kids are resilient." Or he was going to laugh at her, because the idea that Dawn, with all that she had been through, was going to collapse into a hopeless little puddle because he was gone was just laughable. Then he realized the Slayer was offering him an out. Get in the Desoto. Leave now and don't worry about guilt or death or redheads with god- awful fashion sense. Run away. Run away now, the demon prattled, before she regains her senses and lives up to her name.  
  
"I don't think I'm going anywhere, Slayer," he said, watching the moonlight bounce erratically off the swaying sword. "I'll probably be here until the end of the world."  
  
Buffy nodded absently, apparently neither pleased nor displeased by his proclamation.  
  
______________________________________________________________________  
  
Notes:  
  
For those who are interested, here is the full text of Porphyria's Lover  
  
Porphyria's Lover  
  
by: Robert Browning (1812-1889)  
  
The rain set early in to-night,  
  
The sullen wind was soon awake,  
  
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,  
  
And did its worst to vex the lake:  
  
I listened with heart fit to break.  
  
When glided in Porphyria; straight  
  
She shut the cold out and the storm,  
  
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate  
  
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;  
  
Which done, she rose, and from her form  
  
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,  
  
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied  
  
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,  
  
And, last, she sat down by my side  
  
And called me. When no voice replied,  
  
She put my arm about her waist,  
  
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,  
  
And all her yellow hair displaced,  
  
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,  
  
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,  
  
Murmuring how she loved me---she  
  
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour, To set its struggling passion free  
  
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,  
  
And give herself to me for ever.  
  
But passion sometimes would prevail,  
  
Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain  
  
A sudden thought of one so pale  
  
For love of her, and all in vain:  
  
So, she was come through wind and rain.  
  
Be sure I looked up at her eyes  
  
Happy and proud; at last I knew  
  
Porphyria worshipped me; surprise  
  
Made my heart swell, and still it grew  
  
While I debated what to do.  
  
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,  
  
Perfectly pure and good: I found  
  
A thing to do, and all her hair  
  
In one long yellow string I wound  
  
Three times her little throat around,  
  
And strangled her. No pain felt she;  
  
I am quite sure she felt no pain.  
  
As a shut bud that holds a bee,  
  
I warily oped her lids: again  
  
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.  
  
And I untightened next the tress  
  
About her neck; her cheek once more  
  
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:  
  
I propped her head up as before,  
  
Only, this time my shoulder bore  
  
Her head, which droops upon it still:  
  
The smiling rosy little head,  
  
So glad it has its utmost will,  
  
That all it scorned at once is fled,  
  
And I, its love, am gained instead!  
  
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how  
  
Her darling one wish would be heard.  
  
And thus we sit together now,  
  
And all night long we have not stirred,  
  
And yet God has not said a word! 


End file.
